A very interesting visit was to the Aquarium.

I was a little worried before I went as I don’t like the idea of confining the larger sea creatures, but I needn’t have worried as they weren’t included, except for a couple of sea lions in the open air on a roof terrace, and they looked content enough.

There were many tanks like the one above, and lots with very small fish.

There was a very large pool for penguins. They had two endangered species, and kept them apart, though they could see each other.

While I was in Boston, one penguin featured on the local news because of her 30th birthday. The average life span in the wild is about 12 years, but the Aquarium already has 5 older than her! I believe they have much larger areas not open to the public where they breed various fauna.

This was the most spectacular resident.

And this was the largest. Seen near the top of a huge tank that was 3 very tall storeys high, so it showed different layers of the oceans.

There was lots of colour.

There were also smaller tanks for some species (presumably to stop too much unwanted eating of neighbours), with lots of information.

I could fill this whole post with pictures from the Aquarium, but I will move on.

A place I would never have visited without my multi attraction ticket was TD Gardens, which is the home of the Boston Celtics (basketball) and the Boston Bruins (ice hockey). They also have a small sports museum which covers a few other sports.

This is the view from the very top tier, which apparently is a very good position to watch matches from.

After we had been on the tour a while, a youth match started which gave a better idea of scale.

These are very famous sportsmen, totally unknown to me. The man in the fishing outfit was, I think, a baseball hero who took up sport fishing later in life.

The whole place is some form of trust and gentlemen’s club. This was the club lounge, and there was wonderful food being wheeled to a dining room whilst I was there. There were only 3 of us on the tour that day, and our guide was the man in the photo, ex USAF who had spent several years on bases in East Anglia.

On the afternoon of Veteran’s Day, I went to the Museum of Science. This was a bad decision as it was overrun with children and families. Most of the interest is in the interactive exhibits, but it was not possible to get near them.

There are also lectures on various topics. I went to the one on electricity, where they had a huge Van der Graaf generator and some smaller machines. The lady in red gave a very interesting talk, and created lots of ‘lightning’ between and around the various objects.

This was the finale with every machine in action at the same time. Lots of noise and more impressive than it appears.

After that I gave up and went back to my AirBnB. It would be well worth a much longer visit during the week in term time.

Boston is the third most expensive city in the US for property, so I was staying in this house in the suburb of Medford, rather than near the centre of town. It is two flats and I was on the ground floor. It is a mixed neighbourhood, that seems to be on the up socially, with some old houses in the road having been replaced with more modern ones.

It is about 5 to 10 minutes away from a retail park, and from more local shops in another direction. Walking to the subway, there is a new development of flats, restaurants, and businesses such as dentists and FedEx. It is then a further 5 minutes to the Wellington station on the Orange Line via a very long bridge.

You do not want to be rushing for the train across this! You can get to the station by car or bus on the far side of the station, but I had to walk into a multi-storey car park and take the lift up three floors to reach the bridge. You are not meant to arrive on foot! It costs $145 for a monthly parking ticket to commute from Wellington Station, which is only two stops from the end of the Orange Line.

This is a train depot. They have recently put new rolling stock on the Orange Line, and this is mainly the old carriages. During the rush hours, it was considerably emptier.

My next attraction is the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

It is an art gallery plus small objects and small household furniture. The objects are mostly quite old, but there are occasional modern pieces included.

This looks like a doll’s house, but is actually a model to be able to show off your house to the world. I think if you had two houses, this might be to display your town house and its valuable contents to visitors to the country one.

There are old masters from Europe, with one room devoted to Monet, and I saw a couple of quite good J M W Turner paintings, one appropriate for an American museum as it showed dead slaves being thrown off a slave ship. But the earlier American efforts like the one above tend to be rather derivative and overly sentimental for my taste.

Dawn and dusk worked quite well, and is I think off the Massachusetts coast.

And these geysers in Yellowstone National Park could not be other than American.

The museum is arranged by world regions. This display of English porcelain is in the European section.

The whole world is well represented apart from Africa, which is represented almost entirely by a few north African Muslim objects.

I really like this modern (21st century) pottery sculpture.

This display of American weather vanes took me back to the Shelburne Museum in Vermont. There was definitely an obsession with weather vanes among early New Englanders.

Small furniture is displayed in somewhat unusual ways.

I spent about 90 minutes there, which is long enough for me at one time, but if I lived in Boston, I would probably take an annual membership. Three visits a year would put one in profit, and several shorter visits would be more rewarding than one very long one.

My final visit for this post was to Bunker Hill.

This very tall monument commemorating the Battle of Bunker Hill in June 1775 is actually on Breed Hill. Both hills are above Charlestown, where I saw the USS Constitution in the last post.

This plaque is on the monument. Sometimes it is possible to climb a staircase to the top to get a spectacular view, but I think it is only open at weekends during November.

Even from ground level there are good views in all directions.

It was a battle with the British during the War of Independence. The American’s original idea was to fight on the nearby Bunker Hill, but they changed their minds, but not the name of the Battle. There is a museum just behind where I took this photo. As it is a National Historic Monument, the whole site is managed by the Federal Parks and the museum is free.

Having decided where to fight, the American forces spent the night digging fortifications on the top of the hill.

This painting gives some idea of the geography. Now much of the water shown has been reclaimed and built on. The fire is at the original town of Charlestown by the Naval Yard, which the British forces burnt as a precaution.

In the museum was a model of the battle, which had a 20 minute commentary, with relevant parts of the landscape lit up at appropriate moments.

It was quite a good way to explain what happened. Eventually the Americans ran out of ammunition and had to retreat.The British won the battle but lost 50% of their forces dead or injured, and subsequently decided to abandon Boston, so to the Americans it is a moral victory.

The museum has numerous relics, including these cannon balls.

This must be a British drum

An officer’s sword

I walked back down the hill through Charlestown, which is a very upmarket area today. The cheapest houses are upwards of $500,000, but most are well over $1 million. This building was a tavern built immediately after Independence. Nowadays it is an architects office, if I remember correctly.

In my next post I will go on a student lead walk around Harvard and to other interesting places.