A Tourist in Boston
Visiting major cities is a natural part of my existence. I work in San Francisco, live in Oregon, and have meetings in New York, Chicago, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Houston, Miami, London, Tokyo and other cities too numerous to name. I had never been to Boston until now.
Boston is a city that mixes the old with the new. It is an old city that was critical in the prelude to and during the Revolutionary War. It is the home of major institutions of learning including Boston College, Harvard and MIT. The city has its own accent, is crazy loyal to its sports teams and has character that is missing from most cities with generic facades.
As a West Coaster, the East Coast never really makes sense to me. The cities are so close together, there is never really a break between places on the highway like the forests, mountains, deserts valleys and endless farms of the Midwest and the West Coast. Boston felt like the classic New England that I’ve heard so much about. In the airport, the line for Dunkin Donuts was vastly longer than the nearby Starbucks. There are Italian restaurants everywhere, farmers markets on streets so narrow to be reminiscent of European cities and the intoxicating smell of fresh food throughout the older parts of the city. There may not be space, but the space that is available is used well.
The history in the city appears in odd places. Paul Revere’s house is a small wooden structure surrounded by brick buildings. The Ben Franklin statue marking the site of the first public school in North America is tucked next to the ubiquitous Morton’s Steak House. The site of the Boston Massacre and the “shot heard ‘round the world” is a metal plaque on the ground between skyscrapers for investment banks. The Boston Tea Party Museum is in the middle of a river next to the Seaport District, an area with the newest development in the city. I doubt the colonialists dumping England’s tea into the water imagined the site would one day be gazed upon from a 26-story building full of tech companies. Take that King Charles!
Boston is a city that I would gladly return to and explore with more time. There is only so much that can be done in a day. Alas, this is the life of business travel.
Site of the Boston Massacre
The USS Constitution
