Boston Trip 2021
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Boston Trip Nov 20, 2021
Left from Amtrak BWI Station at 0630, 28 deg. BRRR-cold.
Took photo of New York skyline as the train went by a bridge.
The train ride seemed to last forever. We brought our own lunches,
flatbread prosciutto wraps.
We arrived at 1430 in Boston at the Boston South station.
We decided to walk to the Hotel Godfrey about 1.5 miles away.
I used the small suitcase as a hiking pole but did
not did not feel well during the walk. It was blustery and chilly.
Boston near South Station
South Station
I relaxed in afternoon, took a tylenol, changed to tennis shoes and
double sox and used 1 hiking pole for our next walking trip
to the restaurant. We went to "Teatro" an Italian restaurant
one mile from hotel and facing the Boston Commons Park.
Felt better during dinner after a glass of rose prosecco and
Montepulciano with the main course and did a lot of talking.
Had octupus salad as an appetizer - best; as my main course it
was a veal saltimbocca too much volume and the veal was a little stringy.
Finally a decaf affogato. Still enjoyed the dinner and the ambiance,
especially the palladio-like reflecting paired mirrors giving a sense
of infinity. Good conclusion to the day. Walked better returning to Hotel
and took a photo of the moon in the center of star Christmas ornament
over the street on way to Hotel.
Photo Montage:
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Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum: Nov 21, 2021
In the morning we took an Uber ride to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
It was sunny and mild and we saw many people outside including
many cyclists, being a Sunday. The museum is located facing a
park with grass, trees and benches.
The museum is structured as with two buildings: a modern glassy
cubic building with a theater and other segmented museum displays.
The entry was in this newer building. But the main part of the
museum consists of a three story Venetian style villa with an atrium
that was imagined by the woman who is responsible for gathering all
the items that are in the museum.
Isabella Stewart Gardner was a wealthy socialite and she married
a rich husband and she loved European art. She spent a lifetime
traveling to and from Europe and acquired many artifacts.
She reminded me of a small scale William Randolph Hearst.
Her portrait was painted by many famous painters including Sargent:
There were innumerable artifacts, tapestries, sculptures,
paintings and even flowers and the trees. The atrium in the
center of the villa was very colorful. The paintings included
masters from all periods beginning with the renaissance including
Raphael, Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt, the impressionists, Sargent
and many others. The Artifacts were not restricted to Europe.
The most infamous historical event about the museum was the theft of
several impressive paintings in 1990 on Saint Patrick’s day.
They stole the large Rembrandt painting, two Vermeer
paintings and several others. They have left out the
frames of the stolen paintings because the thieves just used a very
sharp knife to cut the paintings from their frames and rolled
them up to take them. They have never been recovered.
So we completed the tour of the three levels of the main museum and
then around lunchtime we went to their impressive Café G
located on the first floor of the modern addition.
I had a salad with two small cheese cakes. Rosemary
had some polenta with ricotta. We shared a flourless chocolate cake
that was excellent. We also each had a glass of sparkling Spanish
Cave wine.
In the early afternoon we went and saw the main exibition in the
modern addition of the museum. It was a set of five huge Titian
paintings. The Venetian painter specialized in large descriptive
scenes of the Greek mythology mainly commissioned by nobility in
Spain. These five paintings were evidently on loan from various places
mainly museums in England. One was owned by Gardner.
I took pictures of all the paintings even though supposedly it was
forbidden to take one picture of one particular painting.
We then exited the museum and spent some time in a small quadrangle
ark facing the museum and there was this ideal tree with
the beautiful red colored leaves in a perfect shape and I took photos
of Rosemary under the tree. We sat on the bench and watched some kids
gathering fallen leaves to make up piles so they could dive into them.
This pretty much a concluded our afternoon at the Gardner Museum.
We then called Uber and got a ride back to the Godfrey Hotel.
We rested for the remainder of the afternoon.
Rosemary found a well rated oyster bar that also had excellent
cioppino that was within walking distance in the North End area
of Boston.
We debated whether to call Uber or to walk there and we finally
decided to walk supposedly 1.8 miles. So we departed in the late
afternoon, early evening and finally got there to the north area
of Boston and stood in a line outside the little one corridor
restaurant and the waited until two seats was available.
We eventually got in this was a restaurant that specialized
in the oyster bar and fish of food. So at the recommendation
of the head waitress, Max got three oysters from three different sources
as sort of an appetizer. The most impressive oysters were from Prince
Edward Island [PEI]. They were the most the succulent I sampled.
As my main course I had the highly reated cioppino which was a very
it wass artfully presented with two slices of bread and two unshelled
crawfish, mussels, cuts of white fish all in a spicy, light wine sauce.
After dinner we then walked up and down the single lane street that
had many restaurants, mainly oyster bars, but also some Italian.
We took plenty of photos we then walked back retracing
our steps to the hotel. We stopped by this park that bordered a
freeway going through the downtown Boston.
Along a long walkway there were these a very large swings with
benches so you could sit on the bench and have it swaying back and
forth so we took some up photos of the swings and us there.
We also went by the Samuel Adams Brewery.
It turned out to be a very good evening even though I felt very
tired because I ended up with 7800 steps for the day which was
the most amount I would have walked since my operation.
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Hotel Godfrey
Photos of Hotel Godfrey and environs.
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Science Museum Boston Nov 22, 2021
On Monday, final day of Boston trip we visited the science museum
and attended the Planetarium display that presented advances in
the search for other planets in the Milky Way Galaxy.
We again had breakfast of coffee Belvita cookies that we had brought
from Maryland. We checked out of the Hotel and left our baggage
there. We then got an Uber ride to the Science Museum. It was cloudy
with light rain and mild. They design of the museum was very open and
it had a lot of interactive exhibits. So this was very conducive to
families in attendance with young children so they could be occupied
and be entertained with a lot of interactive exhibits.
At 1130 we went into the planetarium and sat through a very impressive
30 minute show about the search for alien life/ planets
in our galaxy and it was very well done with the excellent music.
For lunch we went to the café restaurant that overlooked the Charles
river and the I got a tomato soup and some sweet potato fries which
were excellent. We then went through various exhibits in the rest
of the science museum. There were mockups of Mercury and Apollo capsules.
There was an impressive full scale display of dinosaurs.
There were also interesting displays of scale models of various history-
changing ships.
They had many sound/ light/ infrared interactive displays
were you could stand in front of the screen and make images
develop.
There also was a Christmas display of train collections that
had just been setup for the season involving
all sorts of trains with detailed scenery and tunnels.
Max & Rosemary in Infrared
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Return
So we stayed at the Museum until about 3:00 PM in the afternoon,
We then got an Uber ride back to the hotel. We got
possession of our suitcases and backpacks that we had left after
checking out from the hotel. We waited until 16:00 and then
took a short walk to South Station and waited patiently
until 1535 for the Amtrak train 177 [Electric Powered] to go
back to Maryland.
On the return trip we had business class seats in the last
car on the train. When we reached the outskirts of Philadelphia
it seemed like the train lost power several times and the cars
were dark even though it kept moving and the emergency lights were
still on. When we got to Philadelphia, we were there for a very long
time and afterwards it was announced that the train operators
thought there had been some sort of collision. They had to make an
inspection of the train to make sure there was no damage.
We finally arrived at the BWI station at 0230 of the morning of
Tuesday, Nov 23. We arrived around at home in Columbia
at 0300. All in all a good trip. Thanks to Rosemary for making
all of the travel arrangements!
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