Day 54 Boston

We woke to more grey skies but at least there was no rain. We enjoyed the breakfast provided by the hostel and then we set out for a day of sightseeing.

Our first stop was the Boston Public Garden. These gardens are next to Boston Common (otherside of Charles Street). Skirting the northern side of the garden is Beacon Street. This is part of what is known as the Back Bay area. Not far down this street we came to the Bulfinch Bar, more commonly known as Cheers. As it was only 9.00am the bar was not yet opened (11am opening).

We continued down the street with buildings commonly referred to as Brownstones due to the brown colour of the brick (some are a reddish brown). Some are three story narrow homes whilst others are three storey narrow apartments.

We then doubled back to the train station and caught the train out to Harvard. Here we roamed around Harvard Yard, a walled area which is mostly accommodation but also includes the Harvard Library (this is bigger than it appears as it also goes below ground and spreads out under the common grounds) and the Chapel.

From here we walked around Harvard Law College then back through Harvard Square and across the bridge to Harvard Business College.

We decided to continue our walk back towards Boston as three bridges down the Charles River was the Boston University Bridge (NB: Boston has 5 universities). This bridge carries cars, then under that is a rail bridge and under that is a pedestrian bridge. It is also on the flight path for Logan Airport (Boston's airport). As such, it can, at one time, have pedestrians, trains, cars and planes crossing it in a layered appearance. Unfortunately, this did not occur the day we were there.

From the bridge we headed towards Fenway Park. We had hoped to do a tour but we discovered there was a Red Sox game go so tours were off. Coincidentally the Red Sox were playing the Toronto Blue Jays which were the teams playing each other when we were in Toronto.

Fenway Park is further down Beacon Street than we had walked in the morning so we decided to keep walking back up this street toward town. At this time of the day the Cheers bar was open. Unfortunately, it was very crowded. We did get to go in but we were only able to take a couple of photos and leave. It looked nothing like the TV show bar other than looking toward the window that shows the stairs leading down to the bar. It was not until we were almost home later that night we realised that what they have upstairs called as the Set Bar would have been the bar seen in the TV show.

We then headed for Boylston Street where we found Trinity Church, a very imposing church next to Copley Square. Earlier that morning they had had a blessing of the animals' service in Copley square.

On the other side of the square is the Boston Library. It is the second largest public library in the USA with 14 million books plus other digital resources. We checked out the children's section (big surprise there).

We headed back towards the hostel and purchased some muffins to have with a coffee whilst we caught up on the blog.

Today we managed to walk 18 km.