This month’s expedition took Erin and me to Boston for a conference she was attending. While the highlight of the trip was getting to spend time with our friends from San Francisco, that’s what we call out of scope. I’ll focus on what I loved while roaming around the city.
Steeped in History
We didn’t actually visit the Boston Tea Party museum, but it’s impossible to avoid it while walking between the Seaport district we stayed in for the conference in southeast Boston, and Downtown Boston. The museum resides at the midpoint of the bridge between those two districts, and you can see a few old ships docked in the water.
This commitment to preserving and celebrating history was amazing to see throughout Boston. Historical landmarks and commemorative statues abound, with the Boston Commons and Public Garden being particularly rich starting points for any history buff. The city revels in its role in the American Revolution, and that through-line of celebrating important figures and living among the past while still moving forward was a fascinating juxtaposition I haven’t seen in any other city.
It’s not only Revolutionary folks, either. There are statues and monuments commemorating notable people spanning the city’s entire history, including the twentieth century.
There’s a plaque about the molasses flood.
I let all this history wash over me as I roamed the streets (see below). I didn’t specifically follow the Freedom Trail or look up any additional information; not for lack of curiosity, but because it was fascinating to experience exactly what the city chose to display. When Erin and I return, we’ll make a point of seeing more, diving into the deep end, and trying to stay afloat amidst the waves of the past. But for this trip, letting Boston’s love of history envelop me and define how I viewed the city was the right move. That’s the benefit of knowing I’ll be back.
The Long and Winding Roads
Old New England city roads are wacky. I thought Connecticut was bad, and then I saw what happens when all of our ridiculousness is compressed into a modern city.
Boston is full of intersections that urban planning textbooks must show in a big red, slashed circle. They’re nonsensical. The traffic light patterns must have been the worst chore to set up, assigned to a woebegone intern from Emerson or Northeastern or MIT or Harvard or… Someone new to Boston could never drive around there by dead reckoning because you can’t be entirely sure a given road will continue to go in a given direction.
Walking, however, is a joy. Nonsensical intersections tend to form fun plazas: isles or peninsulas of sidewalk space taken over by food trucks or outdoor bars. Then, you’re suddenly squashed into half-sized paths full of construction, snaking your way through throngs of native Bostonians who walk pleasantly quickly and, when they choose to amble, tend to make room.
I circumnavigated Downtown Boston on the first afternoon I took off work. The cobblestone thoroughfares with awesome split-level storefronts in old brick buildings just north of the Commons area were cozy. Aided by autumn and the remnants of a recent rainstorm, that mid-afternoon sun set every angle glistening. Even the financial district and other more corporate areas were worth stopping to awe at, aided by those haphazard street crossings that require each skyscraper to pose at jaunty angles.
All this exploration on a Wednesday afternoon let me focus on my only planned activity.
Monstah Mash
Fenway Park is fantastic for a tour. It contains a microcosm of both themes I noticed above: celebrating history and unusual thoroughfares. It’s the oldest active MLB stadium, with decades of momentous events and tributes to players preserved throughout. Its shape is wholly defined by its location in an asymmetric area of strange streets. Fenway is old and strange and charmingly outdated, but by gum, it’s Boston’s baseball stadium! They’re proud of it, and I’m happy to have seen it.
Touring a stadium hardly counts as “visiting”, though. I need to see a baseball game there next year, ideally when my decimated Minnesota Twins are in town. Then I’ll have additional context for Fenway and what it means to the area, all the tidbits of trivia, and I can focus on the game experience rather than the stadium as an empty shell.
One aside: our tour guide forced us to lean into a heavy Boston “Monstah” yell before leading us to the seats atop the Green Monster, but disappointingly, she did not have a notable Boston accent. I only caught those from the crossing guards and traffic cops near the conference center.
Wicked
Maybe I’m still an impressionable and optimistic young man, such that I’m awed by any big city. Toronto was fantastic, and I even pleasantly chuckled at the chaos of Times Square when Erin and I went to a Broadway show and dinner this weekend.
Yet, I left Boston knowing that the city is proud of its place in American history, that it will continue to revel in it and protect what that history means, and that it’s confident that others will appreciate how they present their earned importance. I’m thankful for that. I’m ready to visit again and see everything I didn’t make time for, or couldn’t see with Erin.