Boston 2008 - Day 2 - August 5 - Do not ever EVER chug wine.

Got up around 8am, had some breakfast,then went to Copley Square to catch the Bean Town Trolley. That was an adventure. An hour later, we found the bus and we on our way!

This town rules! Everyone is really nice and there's too much history to keep up with!. Drove past concert halls, churches, MIT (woo hoo!), North End, Cheers, Boston Common, the duck park, theatre district and about a trillion other things!

Walked to North End to G'vannis for lunch - best Italian I've ever had, 2nd best for Todd. Cheese ravioli, spaghetti & meatballs and merlot - YUM!! Then to Mike's Pastry for dessert (cash only!) - got 2 canonlis, pizzelle, tiramisu, eclair, peanut butter cup, raspberry rugalache and some colory bit - woo hoo!

Harbor Cruise which allowed for gorgeous skyline pictures and some nice shots of the USS Constitution.

Walked back to the hotel for a break before heading to a pub on Boylston.

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Tidbits of Learning from Day 2:

* The new John Hancock Building has 10,000+ mirrored panes, each weighing 500lbs.
* Trinity Church is Episcopalian
* The top of the old Hancock building has a light that indicates weather, via a poem:
Steady blue, clear view
Flashing blue, fog is due
Steady red, rain ahead
Flashing read, snow instead (or Sox game is cancelled, in the spring/summer)
* Jacob Wirth Co - oldest German restaurant in the city (country?)....claims to sell 1million pounds of sauerkraut each year
* I-90 will take you all the way to Seattle with no stop lights and 5 tolls.
* Boston Financial District is 2nd only to Wall Street NYC
* The Big Dig was originally set to finish in 1999 at a cost of $3billion. It actually finished in 2008 at a cost of $22billion.
*Institute of Contemporary Art is located at Seaport & Boylston Wharf
* The No Name Restaurant is THE place to eat seafood...located between the two catch drop buildings in the Seaport District
* The Spirit of Boston is a yacht that offers nightly 3 hour dinner and dancing harbor cruises.
* St. Patricks Day is also called Evacuation Day in Boston (peace out to the Brits Day, basically)
* The Brinks Robbery was in 1950. They stole about $1mil. Only about $50K was recovered and the trial/investigation cost nearly $3mil.
* Quincy Market is 2nd only to Disney in # of visitors each year.
* Boston hosts 600,000 locals and 117,000 students.
* 1 of 3 people in Boston is between age 21 and 35....very similar to Seattle.
* New England School of Law (Portia School) was the 1st law school for women. Interestingly, women could practice law, but not vote.
* The Cheers Bar is located at S. Charles & Boylston (more or less).
* General Hooker frequently purchased "ladies of the night" for his soldiers....hence, "hookers".
* Charles St. & Beacon St. - private shopping district for the neighborhood in the 1800s.
* On Cambridge & New Chardon, you can find a combination Dunkin Donuts - sushi bar!
* Massachusetts General Hospital has 900+ patients.....and 23,000 docs and staff.
*The Liberty Hotel is a former prison that was designed so that each cell got as much daylight as possible. Even so, prisoners complained and complained about the living conditions and a few years ago, the prison was shut down. But because it was already on the historical landmark registry, it could not be torn down. So it was turned into a hotel, complete with bars on the windows, with the Presidential Suite running $4000/night.
* From the balcony of the old State House, the Constitution was read for the first time in 1776. In 1976, Queen Elizabeth greeted Bostonians from the balcony again, ending with the statement, "All is forgiven. You may come home." (She's a funny lady, isn't she?)