Day 24- Coming to America- Boston

This has been a long overdue post. Pardon me if it may seem haphazard by the end of the travelogue! I don’t know if I can even call it one because I have forgotten much of what I had wanted to say. I can’t even remember where I had jotted down all the notes on my observations and experiences of the place. Now all I have are just some pictures. Let me see if I can try gather some of my forgotten thoughts back when I browse through them…

So we reached Boston after a wonderful experience in Washington which I have recounted here.

Let me admit, at first glance as soon as we stepped out of the airport, Boston didn’t impress me all that much. It was probably because we were still hungover from Washington which seemed much cleaner, more organized and more well laid-out. Boston on the other hand, looked ragged and very congested.

But as we got exploring, visited landmark sites that were witness to so many key events, oriented ourselves with its historic contribution to the American Revolution, we learned that beneath the raggedness were years of toil and sacrifices that made the city so much tougher. Here was the city where the seed of the “One Nation” dream was sowed.

And this DUCK below was what took us around on the first day of getting in…

Its a replica of a WW2 amphibious vehicle

The Duck Tour was a fun way to get introduced to the city. We had a rollicking guide as our ConDUCKtor who kept us all amused and amazed by his terrific sense of humour and a vast knowledge of the city, sharing interesting stories as we cruised past some of the significant monuments and structures. Needless to say, Namnam, had a thoroughly enjoyable ride in this bus which also turned into a boat as it splashed down right into the Charles River giving us a beautiful panoramic view of Boston and Cambridge skylines. And guess who got to steer the boat too!

😀

One of our favourite haunts in the 3 days that we were there was The Faneuil Hall Market Place.

Faneuil Hall was built in 1742 and has been a market place and a meeting hall ever since. It is also a popular stop on the Freedom Trail, a 2.5 mile long walking track that passes along 16 historic sites significant to the building of this nation.

Since our hotel was close by, in the Waterfront area, we used to just head out there for an aimless stroll and to people-watch. The place would give out a very lively and festive vibe with performers, tourists and marketers thronging every evening.

Boston’s Freedom Trail was not as elaborate as I had expected it to be because of the horribly hot weather. So out of the 16 locations, we could only get to tour about 4 or 5. It was quite enlightening nonetheless.

The Old State House, built in 1713, is one of the oldest public buildings in the United States. It was here that the American Revolution was set in motion. In 1776, the Declaration of Independence was read out from this balcony of the House. It has now been turned into a history museum and is a conspicuous landmark on the Freedom Trail.

The Old South Meeting House, built in 1729, was more of a Puritan meeting house than a church for colonists who gathered to challenge British rule. Among the many meetings conducted, the House was witness to one particular gathering that triggered one of the most important events leading to the American Revolution- The Boston Tea Party of 1773.

So after a brush with history, we decided to spend a day in a place that had the power to shape a kid’s future. The Harvard University.

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Oh how I wished I could go back to college! Such was the electric vibe of the place. I was completely mesmerized. We were given a tour around the campus by a resident student who took us to all the key places..yes including the dorm buildings where Matt Damon and Natalie Portman stayed while they studied there.

And even Mark Zuckerberg!

Yes! That’s the hostel he stayed in while he was a student there.

After that fulfilling tour of Harvard, I was content and ready to say my byes to Boston. But Namnam & R had one more pit stop to make. So we set out for our final stop where I chose to stay put and wait at the lobby while they went in to say their hellos to Freida Kahlo, Georgia O’Keeffe and many others.

Leaving you all with a final set of pictures from the Museum of Fine Arts

Day 23- Wordless Wednesday

Cannon Mountain, New Hampshire. Jul 2016

Day 6- Chaos

That’s the state my mind is in right now. Utter chaos.

There are so many topics that I have in mind to blog about but they are all playing havoc inside me, crushing and pushing each other out of the way to escape. None of the them seem to be particularly succeeding in outsmarting the other to make it as a post. Bah!

Anyway I anticipate that this particular chaos is going to be an ongoing affair throughout this marathon…if I survive it that is. So let me not bore you all. Instead let me indulge in some cheating and club one of the topics that I had in mind with this week’s photo challenge.

Here’s an image that came to my mind the moment I saw the prompt from WordPress’s Weekly Photo Challenge.

Times Square

We were here in August this year. New York in general was good to us. So when we went to Times Square, I was fully expecting to take well to its vibe too. Sadly it was not to be. Probably because I was way too exhausted after a long day getting around the other parts of the city, to truly appreciate the dazzle that this particular corner was widely known for. Or probably it was never meant to take well to me :D. Anyway this place perfectly described chaos. Where everyone was in an insane amount of rush to get past and on. Blindingly jazzy buildings, the razzmatazz, the vibrancy was too smothering for me to take in. It was so unsettling and so chaotic that I just couldn’t connect with it.

What amazed me though was how hundreds and thousands of people thronged the place with such fervour till the wee hours of the night. There was a certain kind of sync in that disorderliness. It was probably their way to break away from their own chaos who knows.

To see something in everything…Day 2

Phew! Finally here, a good 2 hours late.

I had planned to be here at about 8, right after I had packed Namnam & R to school and office respectively. Because then I would have some quietness and the laptop all to myself. I had the perfect plan to perch myself in front of my comp and start tapping some letters to make a post. In fact between yesterday from the moment the publish button for Day 1 post was clicked and today I must have cooked up some 100 prompts in my mind to write about.

As Rekha so rightly observed in her post, its funny how a blogging marathon can make us sit up and look at everything that comes our way as a probable fodder for post! There was a post sticking out of that line of ants which went marching past me ; the spilt milk cried out loud for a chance to grace my blog ; even the biggest news about a certain news anchor calling it quits had a prompt LOUD enough to befit a blogpost!

But whats equally funny, in my case, is when I get down to turning all those prompts into a full fledged post, they all come crumbling down to nothing.

See now for instance, I started out with a grand plan to tell you all how and why I got late in logging in here. But as always dragged on with the hows, with no sight of the whys. So let me get to the why before I lose you to sleep.

As I geared up to kick start the second day of the marathon, a friend dropped by for a quick hello. Once she left, the computer beckoned again, and this time I got lost in a pool of pictures of an adventure camp that Namnam had been to last week. So a good hour or more was spent looking through those 1000+ pictures, trying to spot my kid, doing a jig each time she was spotted and then sharing them with the rest of the family back home.

Then once that was sorted, I closed all the tabs, kept my phone far away with Whatsapp/Facebook/Twitter temporarily gagged (at the risk of gasping for my own breath), so there’s no room for any further distraction, and landed here and spent another 2 hours to cook up a non-post, which is what you have just read. Now off I go in pursuit of some fodder for tomorrow.

Before I sign out, a peek into what my li’l camper was up to last week…

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