chicus.com

Playing Tourist
Dec 15, 2009
Jen left for London on Friday evening, leaving me in Boston but kind of feeling like I am on vacation as well. That could read as if I am looking for a break, which is not what I mean at all. It's just that a large part of my routine in Boston will thrown off for 10 days.

I awoke to go to the bathroom at 6:40 Sunday but before returning to bed as planned I checked my phone and saw Jen had written in the very early hours of the morning. I groggily read of her plans to tour some castles on Sunday and made a spur-of-the-moment decision to do something touristy for myself and visit East Boston.

East Boston isn't exactly a tourist trap. It's generally a working class part of the city. In my 8+ years in Boston I had never spent any time there but what drove me there Sunday morning was the presence of The Madonna Shrine perched atop a large hill. I had been told it was a peaceful place with a great vantage point of the city.

It was a chilly (25F) morning with crisp blue skies that were expected to cloud over by around noon and start pouring a cold rain by around 4 so I decided to not crawl back in bed until a more reasonable hour and instead layered a winter jacket over a hooded sweatshirt and long sleeved tee and hopped on the train. After a quick stop at Dunkin I was up to the shrine by 8:30. I noticed that Pope John Paul II dedicated the plaza some 20 years ago. They were celebrating Christmas with a nativity scene and I learned something new...top hats were all the rage at the time of Jesus' birth. I saw a new view of the skyline and the harbor (I like the colors in the foreground). There are some cool mosaics of the Stations of the Cross and just beyond some row homes which caught my eye. The actual shrine is quite weathered. On the way down the hill I noticed an etching in the stairs and wondered how bored someone must be to write just that.

On the walk back down the hill and my subsequent 5 miles I noticed two things. First, there must be more statues of the Virgin Mary per capita in this area of town than any other. They also seemed to be leaders in those inflatable Christmas lawn thingy's, of course they were all lifeless lumps at 9 AM.

I was walking down a little street towards the harbor and looked up and was shocked to see a 757 staring me in the eyes. It was a couple football fields away but it took me by surprise. I turned the corner and walked along the harbor until I was directly behind flights taking off (this one was just about to make his final turn). I couldn't capture it well but there was noticeable change in the water behind the larger planes as they take off.

I then headed out onto the peninsula of Winthrop where there was a beaten down shack on land the government has since claimed because it is directly below the descent of southerly approaching flights. Just beyond the shack was a cop directing traffic at a Dunkin Donuts...it struck me on a few levels. A few more miles down I found stairs to access a small beach and stood at water level and looked back at Logan and the city. At this point my stomach was angry that I had walked so far on an empty stomach so I turned around. On the way back I tried to take a shot of a driveway between two homes that opens upon the harbor. It wasn't quite the shot I was hoping for but you can only do so much with a point and shoot.

Anyhow, that is me being a tourist in the city I have lived in for almost 9 years. I think this retelling was a bit dry, bear with me as I regain my ability to write here.