A bad tour, a Better Story

Monday, October 3, 2022

We made it to Boston! Huzzah!

Tom and Louise have been to Boston and suggested we go to the Tea Party Museum. It sounded like fun education, so we were in. I looked around at things to do in Boston and the hop on / hop off bus tour sounded good. We got off the boat and strolled down the block to meet the bus. Lots of other people had the same thought, so we waited more than an hour for a bus with room for us to arrive.

Our guide’s “name” was New York, because he was from New York. He was without question the worst tour guide I have ever experienced. We rode on his bus for 2.5 hours and learned that the Hancock building windows fell out when it was built, but they fixed them and it was worth it because they are very reflective, and you can see yourself when you ride by.

That is it. The only thing he managed to say, besides

“I’m going to tell you about some things in a little bit.” (he did not)

“We are by the seaport because we are picking up cruise passengers. If we weren’t, we would not come here.”

“I didn’t pay attention to history in school. Or maybe I did.”

We stopped at the first hop off spot and he got off the bus. In the quiet, a man asked, “Does anyone know how to drive a bus?”

We went over a bridge that was next to a new bridge being built. He said, “This is a temporary bridge. It’s really flimsy. I think it is made out of Styrofoam. See that yellow line? It’s moving. I think it’s cracking.”

“Stop number 13 is closed. Or maybe it’s not. But it is. It might be for a protest. Or it might be for construction. There’s no way to know. It might be open later. There’s no way to know. “

“I want to answer your question.” (but never did)

“This is very confusing. I have to do some calculations. When I am driving, it’s hard to do calculations. But it’s two hours around. Or two and a half. It’s hard to know without doing the calculations.”

“Every building should be a castle. Everyone loves castles. There’s a castle.” (I unfortunately did not know where to look to see the castle. I do love castles.)

“I get home at night and tell myself, ‘You gotta remember to look! Look out!’

“Six hundred thousand people come here to work. Usually on Thursdays and Fridays.”

“I always get so excited. It’s hard to do the calculations. I get so integrated.”

Most of these were repeated several times. Or more than several times. It got to the point that I was crying with laughter when we were talking to the British people behind us and they were talking about him.

Eventually, we got to the museum. We learned all about the tea party and we even threw tea into the harbor. Yay us. We were very careful, because there are two rules in Boston: Safety first and treason second. The museum was excellent.

We walked down to the Trillium brewery to get some take home bottles for Tom and Louise to gift. I was so excited to participate, I got a bottle for my brother. Apparently, it is a famous craft brewery. We had to scurry to the bus to get back on board in time not to get left behind. If you take an official ship excursion, they always wait for you. If you are just roaming around on your own, they can leave you behind. I get pretty nervous about being left behind, so I like a buffer. We took the bus from the museum stop straight to the port and Quint, our new driver told us about 76 things about Boston in the 8 minutes we were on his bus. Honestly, what a day it could have been if we’d been with Quint all day.

We went to a show with Lou Gazzarra, who was on American Idol in the second season. That is how he was billed, so I will say that. He put on a really good show – from Elvis to Frankie Valle to Nessen Dorma. Trivia tonight was all about Louise – we listened to a popular song from 8 different categories and had to fill in the next line when the music stopped. I got ZERO. She got 15/20! Woop woop!