Amphibious vehicles and a whole lot of walking!

Day 21
Wednesday June 15th

We ventured into Boston today.  The drive, about 70 miles from our condo, not too bad!  Still, by the time we get all our 'stuff' loaded (snacks, drinks, strollers, children) we know it'll be nearly lunch time before we arrive.  Parking is a tricky thing.....I guess not so much as tricky but just costly!!  We decided to park at the Museum, knowing the Ride the Duck tour commenced from here.  Next decision.....do we purchase the duck tickets along with museum admission tickets (some discount given) or just do the duck tour.  It should have been an easy decision, but it sure took us a lot of back and forth discussion to figure out that we'd just do the duck tour and save the museum stuff for Washington DC.  Don't get me wrong, the museum looked super fun.

We decided to take a later afternoon tour and walked to the Galleria mall to get lunch.  Hungry kids sure are insistent, sheesh!  Thank goodness for a variety of eating choices-some kids picked Taco Bell and the rest of us picked chinese/Mongolian BBQ type food.  I have never been so happy to eat rice, broccoli, cabbage and few other unidentifiable veggies mixed with chicken!  Even managed to get some veggies down Laurel-wonders never cease.

As we readied to board our 'duck', the younger 3 pulled out their tourist purchase.....duck lips.  Loud, obnoxious, but pretty funny, duck lips-thankfully they weren't the ONLY ones on the tour with them!

The tour took us by many of the historical sites to see in the downtown Boston area-this one, the building where the Declaration of Independence was read, right there on the balcony on the second story with the flag above it.

We also drove past a building that reflected the images of some pretty awesome people-who are they?

It just so  happened that while we were in town, Boston's professional hockey team, the Bruins, were in the midst of wrapping up the championship games of the Stanley Cup.  The town had banners up everywhere, including on the capitol building!

The George Washington statue in the Boston Commons area was also sporting a Bruins jersey.  Bill and I thought that was kind of odd to put a jersey on the statue, but I guess cities with professional teams that are playing well get a little carried away. This one was taken later in the day-

After our Duck tour guide transitioned to the water part of the tour, he offered to let some kids 'drive' the boat.  Who raised his hands faster than we could blink?  Eric of course!

 He got an 'I drove a Duck' sticker.  It lasted about 30 minutes.

He was pretty thrilled with himself and the opportunity to drive The Duck, well, I guess it was 'steer' more so than 'drive'.  While the tour itself was something to do as a tourist and the kids liked it, after it was done and over, Bill and I both felt like it wasn't necessarily worth the money.  For all 7 of us to ride, it was $180 and we could have seen it all for a whole lot less. 

When we got back to the museum, it was approaching dinner time and we had a place in mind.  For the 2 months before we left on the trip, I signed up for Living Social deals for all the areas we were going to visit.  A deal came through for a pizza place in Boston....I bought it, not really knowing how far we'd have to go to find it....well, after plugging it into our phones, it was determined we would walk it.  Wow......we walked, and walked, and walked.....and WALKED!!  It was a 2 mile walk to dinner but thankfully the weather was pleasant and we were able to see some neat areas.  We walked right past where the Boston Pops perform outdoors-

 and where people actually live ( I find that part of vacations very intriguing)

The walk was really nice, and boy, were we hungry by the time we got there!!

Now, to tell the story completely, I have to say that before we took off on our LONG walk, we called the restaurant, a pizza place, to see if we needed reservations.  Certainly didn't want to walk there to find out there was a big wait.  Well, when we walked up, we immediately understood why we got a bit of a chuckle from the guy who answered and what, precisely, was meant by 'we have outdoor seating'.

Ummm, the outdoor seating was minimal.  There were 8 chairs and 4 itty bitty tables and NO room inside to eat.  This was our first experience with this type of restaurant but it wouldn't be our last one of the trip! We ordered and anxiously awaited our 2 large pizzas.  The kids crammed into the lobby to watch them cook.

We filled up with fuel and started the looooong walk back to the museum.  We found this place for the kids to 'hang around' ha-ha!

We ended our first day in Boston with a beautiful sunset-

I think we walked 8 miles today, whew!! 

Beach time tomorrow,  Day 22!!!