Boston Duck Tour

So, we survived the Boston Duck Tour and are back to tell you our tale.  These ducks, also known as DUKW, were created for the Allies during World War II as a means to unload cargo and men from ships in places where docks did not exist.  But we'll spare you the technical details.

The tour began at the Prudential Tower (at 749 feet, it's the 2^nd tallest building in Boston) where we boarded these old yet comfortable ducks.  Ours was the "Fanuel Holly", and we were lucky since our captain was actually a pirate and knows his way around town.  (Okay, with blue hair he wasn't really a pirate, but he did know his way around town.)

Our first stop was the Christian Science Church.  Supposedly there's a lot to say about this one but we'll just sum it up as an old and very interesting building.  From there we drove down Boylston Street past the Boston Public Library and Trinity Church to the Boston Public Gardens.  The Public Garden was established in 1837 when philanthropist Horace Gray petitioned for use of the land as the first public botanical garden in the United States, or at least that’s what Wikipedia says.  Anyway, we passed the Garden and Boston Commons and crossed down to the Massachusetts State House located in Beacon Hill (interesting fact: it cost $300,000 to cover its dome with 23k gold!).

From Beacon Hill we arrived at the TD Garden, home of the Boston Celtics.  From there we passed by the Museum of Science and dipped into the Charles River for the wet part of the journey.  As we crossed under the Longfellow Bridge into the Charles River basin we were able to see a great view of Cambridge to our right and downtown Boston to our left. 

As we returned to land we passed by Bunker Hill on our way to the North End, home of Paul Revere.  From there our return back to our starting point took us by Quincy Market, the Old State House, Cheers (where everybody knows your name), and Newbury Street. Oh, we also passed by the John Hancock building with super reflective glass. Look, that’s us!

Obviously we learned one main thing from this trip: there are lots of sites to see in Boston and that all of these spots may have been just a bit too much to cover in this post (Especially without photos. What can we do? Sometimes you’ve got to stop snapping photos from within a moving vehicle for the sake of safety.) But fear not! We’ll elaborate on all of these pretty places in future posts (we promise).