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From the car park, it was just about a mile walk into Boston centre, up Columbus and past the east side of Boston Common. Those of you who know me, know that I have an excellent sense of direction, finding my way often quite easily through new places, but despite having a map in the Rough Guide, and finding the corner of Columbus and Arlington, I regret to say that I started confidently walking south on Columbus, out of Boston. I have no real excuse for this, other to suggest that it reflected the disturbing start I had made to the trip and in retrospect I found that Arlington crossed
Columbus Avenue, and was not simply a turn off it.. I was enjoying the walk, looking at the new to me style of buildings in brown brick, but all the time expecting to see the Common come into view. When I found myself at a junction which certainly looked nothing like I was expecting, 
I stopped and asked, and was shown another road on the Y junction to return to the centre, so having walked a mile further out , I then had two miles to walk back, so apart from being well exercised, it was about 11-.30 when I finally made it to the centre. Approaching the
centre the road was lined with large early 20th century residences, all with steps and side rails up to large front doors on the first floors.
They were mostly in beautiful condition and impressive long terraces. The side streets were even more beautiful, many arranged around a central garden island in thickly tree lined streets and the sunshine brilliantly illuminating the greenery. I got an impression of the wealth of old Boston, and indeed the probably cost of living in one of these houses nowadays. Downtown, I also spotted this excellent piece of 20th century trompe l'oeil, 
which I wanted to show you, although I suspect that Boston City Council have not noticed it or appreciated how good it is, since a new building is about to obscure it forever. The centre of Boston is mostly tasteful 
eclectic mix of architecture from the late 19th and early 20th century buildings, mixed with moderate and quite attractive skyscrapers. Some of the old department stores and offices of the early 1900s were to me perhaps the most pleasing. Around the centre area of the city, is a red line, mostly in cobbles, etched into the pavements, which, when followed takes the traveller on the Heritage Trail around the major sites of the historic events in Boston. Boston had become a major trading centre rapidly after the early settlers arrived, and the natural harbour was the base for many warehouses and trading companies. The British governed the Colony for King George Vth, and had a large garrison based there. The problem arose because, instead of seeing what an asset the actual people and place was, the King imposed taxes which started to milk the businesses dry. Even a tax on paper was introduced, and this, on top of taxes on all businesses and property, started to inflame a mutinous resentment amongst the settlers. The taxes were collected ruthlessly and finally a law was issued which allowed the British troops to enter any property and search for goods and property upon which tax might be avoided. There was a natural tendency to try to avoid it with contraband. The start of the War of Independence can possibly be dated to the 5th March 1770, when an angry mob of traders and other settlers gathered outside the old State House and started to pelt the British soldiers with stone filled snowballs. Whether they were actually armed or not is debateable but the upshot was that eventually the troops fired into the crowd to dispel them and five settlers, thereafter known as patriots were killed including, interestingly a freed slave named Crispus Attucks, attributed to be the first black colonist to be killed in the War. Actually the War of Independence itself did not truly kick off until 1775, but the writing was on the wall, and there were further acts of resistance and no diplomatic measures put in place to resolve the situation. On December 16th 1773, a group of eminent businessmen plotted to deny the Crown of taxes due on a large shipment of tea, the new and highly desirable export from China to England. The ships were in the harbour waiting for the taxes to be paid before sailing for England, and these men organised quiet boarding parties to empty all the tea overboard into the harbour, so denying the Crown of enormous taxes. The Boston Tea Party, as it became known, caused a major stink with the governing British, and it is said, an equal smell of tea hanging in the harbour district for several days.
It was fitting that it was from the balcony of the Old State House that, on July 18th 1776, the first reading was made of The Declaration of Independence after the War had been lost by the British.The Old State house has a wonderful central wooden spiral staircase from its basement to the second floor, and I imagine, because it had been regarded as a place highly significant in British Colonial life,
was largely neglected after Independence The Colonists tore down the lion and the unicorn and royal crest from the top of its eastern gable, and thereafter, in its lifetime it was variably a warehouse and shops. Thankfully, although it was almost demolished, and they actually built an underground metro under it, it was actually restored, and now is a museum. Following the Heritage trail, I went to 
Quincy Market, a beautiful Georgian stone building where markets have been held for over 250 years. Now, the inside, as I am coming to expect, is lined with 
about 80 fast food outlets, selling all kinds of delicatessen and many junk foods. I also saw Faneuil ( as Daniel) Hall, the large meeting place of revolutionaries and later the abolitionists, and then on to the Paul Revere House. This is actually the only surviving 16th century wooden house in Boston. Paul Revere only lived there for about 30 
years, but managed to have 8 children by each of two wives. It was Paul Revere, famed from the poem by Longfellow, who rode from Boston to Concord, on the night of April 18th 1775, to warn the patriots of the British Army’s march northwards to search the Barrett farm for hidden weapons of the revolution. I will not repeat this story, but if you want to see it, look up Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem Paul Revere’s Ride. This is not believed to be entirely accurate as Revere was captured before he completed his entire mission, but not before he had successfully warned the patriot militia who immediately moved all the stashed weapons, and mobilised in wait for the soldiers. Revere was an interesting man, typical of the revolutionaries in that he was a successful businessman, a silversmith, and later became the owner of a foundry casting bells and also cannons and mortars which were used in the Civil War, and the steel plates which cover the hull of the USS Constitution, the oldest, still sailing, warship in the world. He must have been quite wealthy and put his life on the line for what they were doing.He lived until he was in his early 80’s, quite an age for those times, although he saw his first wife die and several of his children.
Just down the road from the Revere house, is a small street of mid
18th century buildings in brick, beautifully preserved as they were and still trading, one as an Oyster restaurant and 
one as a gift shop selling items associated with “Beantown” an old nickname for Boston. It was here that, at least one recipe for baked beans started, though whether they were also developed elsewhere in the settlements too is debatable. See photo of a recipe if you want to try to make your own, but I think that the modern baked bean is made from a Haricot bean rather than a type of pea; maybe they are the same name things? Whatever, if the colonists ate much of that recipe, it would not just have been tea that was smelt around the harbour area, and cowboys always seemed to be eating a “plate of beans” with their coffee, so I guess the plains were pretty windy places as baked beans spread westward.I left Boston easily, this time following the eastern edge of the attractive Boston Common, under the shadow of the great gilded dome of the present State House. To me, this is singularly brash, being the most shining gold dome I have ever seen, and is definitely a feature indicative of The New World taste, or lack of it, rather than the Old.. There is absolutely no way that one is going to camp in Boston, unless one is to sleep out with the homeless or drunks on the common or hide away down an alleyway in some building entrance. This would not be a sensible or safe idea, so I went south out of the centre to a Ramada hotel, which for its cost was actually a disappointment. It was full of rowdy schoolchildren and I had one of my Harley Davidson summer riding gloves stolen from the helmet on my bike.
The following morning, I headed to the West of Boston to Cambridge, to see the great Harvard University complex. Now, I don’t really know what I had expected, but, dare I say it, I think I
had confused it with Yale, since I expected to see a sort of mini reproduction of Cambridge in England, but I was overall pretty disappointed, and frankly, it is hardly worth the effort to visit. The town itself is fairly bland, though pleasant to walk, and I sat in a 
café there for over an hour sipping a coffee and eating a cake while listening to an excellent young white blues singer on the pavement outside. He sang good original Leadbelly type blues and played an electronic 12 string guitar. I have to say that this was the highlight of my day there. The university campus, divided into an Old and New Yard, actually large lawned greens, is populated largely by brown brick rectangular buildings, of little architectural interest, except perhaps for the Memorial Hall, a gothic style structure with wooden vaulted ceilings, built in memory of those Harvardians who died serving the Union in the Civil War ( but not those who served in the Confederacy!) and which houses a large dining hall and lecture theatre, neither of which 
we were allowed to see. The dining hall was reported as being the one on which the dining hall at Hogwarts, in the Harry Potter films, was based. Nothing would surprise me about such claim, since Harry Potter seems to have stormed the USA and they have clearly adopted everything about him and his author as being American. I was told much the same about the cloisters at Gloucester Cathedral and the Castle at Alnwick in England, so what one believes seems to be an individual’s choice! On the basis of the popularity of Harry Potter in the US alone, it would seem that, not only need J.K. Rowling never work again, but Daniel Radcliffe may also live on royalties for the rest of his young life. 
The other building of note was the great Widener Library, which was erected by a millionairess in memory of her son who was a graduate at Harvard and was killed in the Civil War after spending a life collecting rare books from all over Europe. It cost $5million to build and was built with a caveat that no brick should ever be altered. This produced some problems, when as the need arose for it to expand they were faced with the problem of what to do. The brilliant Harvard legal minds came up with a plan which would suit the caveat, and they then proceeded to build five stories of underground library right under the original building. Apparently it contains at least one Lutheran bible and an original Shakespeare portfolio, but, of course, we were not allowed into the library either. Finally we were not allowed in to see the ugly modern science block, which apparently has its own water heating and cooling plant, an observatory, fully computerised lecture theatres and many other wonderful 21st century facilities, which I didn’t see, or the firestation, built on Harvard grounds with the proviso that it was built in keeping with the existing architecture of the university. I did however see the statue of John Harvard, which is actually not of John Harvard, because nobody knows exactly what he looked like. A story is told of how, John Harvard gave his entire collection of 250 wonderful books and an endowment to the University, and in gratitude they renamed it after him. Such a revered man, with his portraits and collection may have been expected to have been well preserved, but the story goes that all his collection of rare books and his papers and pictures were house in the original library. A student, working late there one night and referring to one of Harvard’s books for a thesis, was tempted when the library closed at night, to conceal the book and take it home to complete his thesis with some diligence; this was against all the library and university rules. He did so, but returning the next morning to replace the book, found the University Dean on his knees in the courtyard in front of a pile of ashes where there library had burned down in the night. All the books and papers and portraits were destroyed in the fire, so no record of what Harvard looked like remained. The student approached the sobbing Dean and proffered the book which he had concealed the night before, the last remaining tome of the Harvard collection. TheDean was overjoyed that one small piece was rescued, but immediately had the student sent down for breaking college rules. The statue was apparently sculpted after the son of one of the Harvard professors, who, it was mooted, looked something like they all believed John Harvard to have looked! So now, the bronze left toe of the Harvard bronze shines with the touch of thousands of undergraduates and tourists who stroke the graven image of this unknown for luck, and the poor John Harvard, remains anonymous. 
I resisted the temptation to massage his toe after being told that the undergraduates have a nasty habit of smearing very unpleasant things on it, and frankly, I’m grubby enough today without getting any worse stuff on me! All a bit of a giggle really I felt, and gradually as I moved on, other such silly tales of the American protection of their heritage will arise! It was really not until the 1960’s that they all seemed to realise that they had some heritage that needed protecting. I think this is because they are separate States, and there seems to be no major central National protection agency, like we have our National Trust and National Heritage Organisations.On the way out on Brattle Street, I passed the yellow mansion at 105, that was the home of Longfellow, and then rode out west to Lincoln, close to Concord and Lexington, where I was going to meet my distant cousin Keith. I very nearly followed Paul Revere’s ride path, except that most of it is covered by highway and the rest is hidden on Battle Road in the woods. Wonder if we get baked beans for supper?
Best wishes,
Doc
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