More from Boston

I've tended to scorn packaged tours as something geezers do. I guess I've become a geezer, hopefully with not too much geezerness. Taking a set of tours helped me see a lot of sights quickly, although not being able to spend much time at any place. It's a good way to know something about a place, possibly for future reference. I will head back to Boston in November for another conference. Fortunately I had great weather to ride in open buses. I also made it over to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. They had an exhibit of Winslow Homer that was interesting. Too much museum to catch in one day.

The pictures show the Boston skyline via a view from the Charles River, which separates Boston from Cambridge. How long will Boston be separate from Cambridge, I ask facetiously. One of my cabbies was complaining that Harvard was buying every piece of property in sight. He made it sound as if the area will one day be called Harvard, MA. The other picture is of the old capital building. Massachusetts has done a good job of preserving the building as the picture testifies.

By Land and By Sea

I took a Super Duck Tour of Boston as well as a Trolley tour of Boston and Cambridge and a tour of the Charles River, a lot for one day. The tour guides have a very mixed quality. The guide for the Duck tour is an out-of-work fisherman who has honed his tour with good and bad jokes, but telling the Boston story with wit and interest. The Cambridge tour folks were students and were putting themselves into it, mostly wanting to impress with possession of a large number of facts. The rest were... well... phoning it in. But no never mind. I got to see a lot in a short time and took a ton of pictures. I'll post some more.

Here is a shot of the vehicle that goes on land and sea. The other boat is the USS Constitution. Unfortunately we weren't able to get a closer look from the water, another limitation in the post 9/11 world. One of the guides said that after 9/11, Boston passed an ordinance significantly limiting the height of new buildings in Boston. I liked Boston a lot, but that was one weenie of a decision. I hope they will revisit that one. Please don't attack us, Mr. terrorist. Geez.

Blue Man Group

Put it into the "need to see it to believe it" category, The Blue Man Group is a lot of fun. They mock modern technology and mock those who make it important and they mock the mockers. A delightful, fun-filled time with interesting music and audience participation. Near the end of the show, the let loose the streamers and the audience has to pull them up to the front. A sea of arms, hands and streamers. I really recommend seeing them live if you can. They're in Boston for about couple of months. I got a sense of them on TV, but live is great.