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Hard to choose a picture for today. I found this tortoise (followed a short distance behind by a rather dissolute-looking hare) in the square a hundred yards or so from the hotel, and it seemed to say something about my rather measured rate of progress resulting from the aftermath of my cold - still very breathless and tortoise-like when presented with hills, stairs etc.
All the same, I've done pretty well today in this likeable and civilised city.Headed off on my own this morning - Chloe retiring, for the first time on this trip, for an extra post-breakfast nap - into Trinity Church, said to be one of the ten best buildings in America and with impressive William Morris stained glass, then through Boston Common and (slowly) up the slope to the Massachusetts State House, where I became somewhat entangled with a bunch of demonstrators complaining about the withdrawal of funding for a project for disabled people."Are you with us?" one of them asked me."More or less," I replied, ambiguously."So why aren't you carrying a placard, then?" he grumbled.
Then I cut into Beacon Hill, home of so-called Boston Brahmins for 150 years or more, and stopped off at a small but beautifully-kept little museum about the history of Boston's African Americans where the (white) curator regaled me with stories of his trip to London in 2007 and his enthusiasm for our unforgettable Drury Lane Park (?).
I wandered back to the hotel, stopped off for a Guinness and woke Chloe up, and soon we went out again, first to sit outside (beautiful blue sky, warmish sun but arcticish wind) at a café for a sandwich and then to head over on the Boston tube to the port district. A plan to visit the second aquarium of the trip was thwarted by the fact that they wanted to charge full price even though it closed in 45 minutes, so we took a boat trip round the harbour, which was good but much the same as all boat trips round all harbours.
Out to what I hope will be a good but pricey fish restaurant tonight.Then, after Chloe has looted the Boston branch of Mac in the morning, out of town to Salem and then up the coast into Maine. I'm determined to spend at least one minute on this holiday out of sight of human civilisation - haven't managed a second yet.
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