At Risk Passengers… this way to collect your ticket to embarrassment please…

Well hello again folks – how are we all? I thought I would give you all an update of the rest of my stay in Boston (you lucky things, you!). Yesterday was a beautiful day in Boston so I decided to skip my indoor plans of visiting a couple more museums and set out for a wander instead.

I took in Commonwealth Avenue on my trip in down town, which is a really wide, tree-lined avenue with different memorials dotted along it for about 12 blocks. It was really interesting and I liked the way that each block had a different theme going. There were also lots of traditional brownstones to admire while I was wandering, not to mention plenty of locals out walking their dogs in the sunshine! Slightly less enjoyable was watching two police officers suggesting a homeless guy “move on” but I guess it couldn’t be all too picture post-card or I might have forgotten that I was in the US!

After Commonwealth Avenue I explored Charles Street and the rest of Beacon Hill. This is the fancy area of Boston (where JFK used to live incidentally) and still has cobbled streets and genuine gas-lamps which shine 24 hours a day. There were lots of little cafes and antique shops so I sat down and people-watched for a while, yet again marvelling at all the dogs in Boston! They do market themselves as the walking city of the US, which is true except for the maniac drivers who are not the slightest bit interested in stopping for red lights and the maniac pedestrians who just wander on the road randomly!

After all that excitement I visited the New England Aquarium, which was great. I hung out with the Little Blue Penguins for a while – just catching up on the news from home, and then admired the massive coral reef set up they have there. Basically they have an enormous tank which goes up about five floors and is a replica of an actual coral reef in the Carribean so you can see what kind of fish would live at each level – great stuff!

I visited the Cheers bar for my lunch – let’s face it, tacky as it may be you couldn’t go to Boston without doing it right? One final Samuel Adams and cheeseburger later, I did some last minute souvenir shopping and visited the holocaust memorial before heading back to the hostel to get my bags. The holocaust memorial was really beautifully done – six tall glass columns (one for each recognised death camp) with names etched on them and you walk through with little spurts of steam coming up and various plagues with people’s quotes on them. Not what I expected to find in Boston, but lovely nonetheless.

My last stop was a wander along Newbury Street, admiring all the fancy shops and restaurants and then I caught the subway out to the airport… and that is when the real excitement began…

I knew that the travel gods had been very kind to me thus far on my travels and that at some point that luck had to turn… I think yesterday may have been it! I was apparently identified as an ‘at risk passenger’, although no-one would actually explain to me why so suddenly found myself being taken in one direction to be searched, my passport being taken in another and my bags in yet another! This was all after a very loud “full search coming” yell had been made across the security area so everyone got to have a good gawp at me! The actual search etc was all fine but man those US customs people can be rude – they were just about to rip into my backpack before I suggested that it might be easier if I unlocked it for them and then left my belongings all over the show and wandered off without telling me if I was OK to leave or what! Obviously they found nothing so I was free to go and did what any good Allison or Freeman would do in the same situation and went to the bar!

Anyway – after all that excitement I arrived safely home to Toronto and even had a nice walk for five minutes in a light snow shower to get back to the hostel where I proceed to sleep like a very tired girl!

Hope you are all well and talk to you soon!