The non-historic tour of Boston

Thursday, September 26th.
Exterior.
Darkness has fallen over the Minuteman Campground in Litteton, MA. A day-long rain has finally let up and all is quiet except for a slight breeze through the treetops. The temperature bears news of the coming winter already. At the outskirts of the campground, beneath the majestic New England pines, a young man sits at a picnic table typing on a laptop computer.

On Thursday morning we woke up to an overcast day and decided to take the 45-minute drive into Boston for a day trip in the city. Arriving there we parked in a garage and took a guess at the directon of Boston Common, the city's "Central Park", and headed for the tourist information office located there.

The Visitor's Center was about the only place we never made it to. Just as we got close to the park we took a right looking for something else and ended up in the middle of the downtown shopping district, where we spent the rest of the afternoon. We had lunch at a food court -- hot dogs and nachos & ice cream (seperately), respectively -- and then hit the downtown circuit of clothing stores and used cd stores. The later proved the big hit of the day, and we both brought back a good selection to add to our growing cd collection. We already have days' worth of non-stop music but rarely hear anything but radio or cassette tapes since our only cd player is in the laptop computer which we don't always have on in the car.

When we finally completed the circle and arrived back at the Common the tourist information office was closed for the day. What we did find in the park, though, was a young Dave Matthews-esque band performing live in a pavillion, apparently at the finish line of some kind of a race. So we stood around and enjoyed the music for a while and then took a stroll through the park, heading back to our van.

The afternoon of parking ended up costing us $19. Which is less than what it would've cost in New York, but at the same time Dan alone had managed to buy 7 cd's for that same amount of money, so it definitely could've been spent better. It's ironic how it is sometimes cheaper to drive a car than to have it stand still...

Getting out of Boston proved a lot harder than getting into it. Its otherwise intriguing history certainly does not benefit the flow of traffic or ease of navigation. It seemed as though there was not a single straight road in the city. That, together with all the one-way streets, made for a quite a bit of detouring and driving in circles. Even in the evening parking was scarce so everywhere there were people doubleparking and leaving their cars in the middle of the road with their emergency blinkers on. Quite a circus.

But we managed to get out of there and found dinner at a local Subway restaurant right before it closed up for the night and then headed back to our campground.