Phil Elmore
Master of Arts
- Joined
- Mar 30, 2002
- Messages
- 1,514
- Reaction score
- 54
I spent Sunday through Wednesday in Boston, MA, and then traveled to Salem. My lovely wife and I enjoyed our vacation very much. We saw many Kerry-Edwards signs and stickers, including an entire store in Downtown Boston devoted to "Kerry for President" materials (signs, mugs, shirts, etc.).
I took lots of good desktop photos of Boston Harbor when we visited the New England Aquarium. My attempts to smuggle out a penguin met with failure and were probably doomed from the start:
At the Museum of Science, we toured a traveling Lord of the Rings exhibit, which was really cool. Here I am in front of one of the Naboo Starfighter props from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.
Boston Common, where the hordes of squirrels are firmly in control, featuers a "Frog Pond" that boasts giant bronze frogs. I mean, how often do you get your picture taken in front of giant bronze frogs?
Here I am in front of a wax museum in Salem, with "Salacious Crumb" from Return of the Jedi. I'm the one on the right.
In the shop of famous witch Laurie Cabot in Salem, there was a sign indicating that double-edged knives are illegal in MA but can be purchased for religious purposes (the double-edged athame, if you do not know, is a religious tool used by Wiccans and other neopagans). Customers were therefore exhorted to buy other items of religious significance if they intended to purchase a double-edged knife of any kind.
Given Boston's size I expected a great deal more... local color, if you will. We rode the T all over the Boston area and saw only a few oddballs. At no time did we feel threatened or unsafe in any way, nor did we see much in the way of decay and crime (granted, we did not see all of the city). I was pleasantly surprised by this.
The more I see of the world (I have been blessed with more opportunity to travel, of late, though not nearly as much as I would like given an increasingly busy schedule) the more I realize that much of my knee-jerk reactions to various other parts of the country are just that. In person, most places are... well, places to which one can adapt, of one must adapt at all.
I took lots of good desktop photos of Boston Harbor when we visited the New England Aquarium. My attempts to smuggle out a penguin met with failure and were probably doomed from the start:
At the Museum of Science, we toured a traveling Lord of the Rings exhibit, which was really cool. Here I am in front of one of the Naboo Starfighter props from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.
Boston Common, where the hordes of squirrels are firmly in control, featuers a "Frog Pond" that boasts giant bronze frogs. I mean, how often do you get your picture taken in front of giant bronze frogs?
Here I am in front of a wax museum in Salem, with "Salacious Crumb" from Return of the Jedi. I'm the one on the right.
In the shop of famous witch Laurie Cabot in Salem, there was a sign indicating that double-edged knives are illegal in MA but can be purchased for religious purposes (the double-edged athame, if you do not know, is a religious tool used by Wiccans and other neopagans). Customers were therefore exhorted to buy other items of religious significance if they intended to purchase a double-edged knife of any kind.
Given Boston's size I expected a great deal more... local color, if you will. We rode the T all over the Boston area and saw only a few oddballs. At no time did we feel threatened or unsafe in any way, nor did we see much in the way of decay and crime (granted, we did not see all of the city). I was pleasantly surprised by this.
The more I see of the world (I have been blessed with more opportunity to travel, of late, though not nearly as much as I would like given an increasingly busy schedule) the more I realize that much of my knee-jerk reactions to various other parts of the country are just that. In person, most places are... well, places to which one can adapt, of one must adapt at all.
