Duck Tour & Red Sox

Day 6 - August 2nd

We'd booked a 9am duck tour yesterday so we rose early, grabbed the complimentary breakfast at the hotel (in a way I was glad just to have a croissant and a coffee) then walked up to the tour start. All the tour guides/drivers have their own 'wacky' bio in the brochure and ours was no exception. He told us his name was Jumping Jim, a nickname he got because he used to be a base-jumper until one day when he accidentally landed on a police patrol car. I've no idea if any of that was

true but he was certainly a character and insisted on shouting 'quack quack' at passers by whenever he got the chance - it was a bit like being stuck in a bus driven by Timmy Mallett. Nevertheless the tour itself was really interesting and we learnt a lot about Boston's 380 year history.

The tour dropped us back outside the Museum of Science so that was next on our holiday hitlist. Even Amy, who is notoriously apathetic about all things science, enjoyed herself - possibly because of all the interactive exhibits (which were aimed at kids but don't tell her that ;). My favourite bits were the live electricity show which included some impressively bright/loud indoor lightning, and a cloud chamber (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_chamber) which lets you watch the trails of alpha and beta radiation. I could have sat and watched that for hours.

We grabbed lunch from a take-away pizza place in little Italy (we had to queue for 40 m

inutes, usually a good sign of quality) which we ate in one of Boston's many parks, then followed that up with some pastries from a popular little italy cake shop.

After a visit to the market to do a bit of shopping, and a short walk round some of the heritage sights of Boston, we headed back to the hotel to freshen up ready for our evening's activity - watching the Red Sox play baseball at Fenway Park. The ground was just a short subway ride from our hotel and we arrived in plenty of time for the match. Time that we filled by purchasing a signed baseball then ordering hot dogs, popcorn, beer and lemonade. Pretty much all the bases covered (if you'll excuse the pun). We also purchased a programme which came with a pencil for filling in the scores - fine except that neither of us really understood the scoring system. That didn't really matter though, the atmosphere was great and the junk food kept coming so we had an enjoyable evening despite the Red Sox narrowly losing (at least I think that's what happened).