Tag Archives: Cityscape

Overwhelmed by Buenos Aires

Thursday 14 March 2024 – Bloody hell, Buenos Aires!  We’ve had a whistle stop tour which took five hours and done a couple of other things and I am completely overwhelmed by the place, and not always in a good way.  We’ve seen a huge amount in a very short space of time and I’m struggling to piece together a coherent story, so please bear with me as I flit from topic to topic in a disorganised way.  For a city which has only been in existence for 200 years, there’s an awful lot of history and culture to take in, and I’m not sure my brain’s up to it.  This will be a loooong post, with lots of pictures. Be warned.

By the way, this is just the city tour.  We also did Other Stuff, which I shall expatiate upon, probably at length, in at least one separate post.

Our guide for our whistle-stop tour was Mariana, who (you remember, of course) had greeted us on our first arrival three weeks ago and who was looking after us for our time here.  We discussed our overall schedule for a few minutes and then went out – in the rain, which still hadn’t really abated after several days of persistent pissing down – to get in to our car with driver Eduardo.

The car had seen many, many better days. There was a crack from left to right across the windscreen, the fuel filler flap was missing, and the SERVICE light was illuminated on the dashboard. Every so often the car would make the special Citroën alarm noises with which I’m so familiar, since I own one at home.  However, mine only complains when there’s something legit to complain about; Eduardo’s would bleep away and he would fiddle with door locks and other controls to try to make it shut up.  However, it got us to where we needed to go, which felt like it was was all over the bloody place but was actually only in about four areas, while Mariana pointed out government buildings, university buildings, churches, embassies and other points of interest while maintaining a stream of comments about Buenos Aires’s history and culture which was very difficult to keep up with.  But now, for example, I know that most citizens in Buenos Aires are into psychoanalysis and most go to a therapist, to the point where if you don’t, people think you’re a bit odd.

Anyhoo….

The basic geography:  BA is divided into 48 neighbourhoods, or barrios.

Our hotel is in Recoleta, a nice neighbourhood.  We also spent a lot of time in Palermo, which is also nice – most countries appear to have their embassies there. We also visited San Telmo (there was no fire there) and La Boca, the last of which is jolly fun during the day but, we are told, is not a place to visit in the evenings. There is also a downtown area, around Retiro and San Nicolas, also Not Safe After Dark, reportedly.

The city is one of contrasts – fine buildings in Nice Areas and clearly griding poverty and homelessness in others. With the ridiculous levels of inflation that the country is undergoing it was never clear to me how to get any local currency (it’s best, apparently, to go to a money changer recommended by someone you respect) and so whenever I was Out And About I felt exposed. I had no clue about the geography or distances and would have been exceedingly reluctant to take a taxi anywhere for fear of being ripped off or worse. It’s a shame that I never really felt relaxed here, and that contributed to the overall sense of being overwhelmed by the place.

Our first stop, which kind of summed up my image of Buenos Aires and Argentina, was “Floralis Genérica“, a gift to the city by the Argentine architect Eduardo Catalano. Catalano once said that the flower “is a synthesis of all the flowers and, at the same time, a hope reborn every day at opening.” It was created in 2002. The aluminium sculpture, a thing of beauty, was designed to move, closing its petals in the evening and opening them in the morning.

Sadly, it’s fucked.

The electronics employed in opening and closing the flower were disabled in 2010 to prevent damaging the sculpture, and it remained permanently open until 2015. One of the petals was incorrectly installed during its assembly, as noted by Catalano himself. The company responsible for its construction, Lockheed Martin Aircraft Argentina, provided a 25-year warranty, but as the company was nationalised in 2009, its repair was delayed. The mechanism was functional again by June 2015. In the early hours of December 17, 2023, parts of the sculpture (including a main petal) fell due to a strong storm. And now there’s (a) no money, expertise or political will to repair it and (b) because of the parlous state of the area’s economy, people keep stealing bits of it to sell illegally. Such a shame; it must have been a thing of joy in its time – something once rich and fine, now in decline, matching my view of the city and country.

Our next stop was at a statue of General San Martin, who is regarded as a national hero of Argentina, Chile and Peru and one of the liberators of Spanish South America.  He (and a couple of his mates) liberated Argentina from Spanish rule in a war from 1810 to 1816. The British were involved in fighting around this time, too and I haven’t quite understood who was fighting whom and for what.  I think the French were probably angling for a fight, too, but I can’t honestly be sure.  The history of Argentina and Buenos Aires is hideously complicated.

Suffice it to say, though, that the practical upshot of all this buggering about is a city that is just 200 years old and with a rich heritage of European architecture.  As Jane and I noted in our first visit here before we went south, there are vast numbers of elegant 19th century European buildings here.  The embassies of foreign countries tend to be palaces, like the British Embassy

and many neighbourhoods (particularly Recoleta, where our hotel is), have a lot of buildings which would not look out of place in Paris.

So when someone wanted to build an art deco house

it was not welcomed among the neighbours.  But it got built anyway.

It could not possibly have been long before the name of Eva Perón cropped up; and we passed the Plaza Evita, where there is a monument to her.

Having never been to see the show or the film about her, I didn’t really know much about her except for the “Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina” thing.  Apparently, actresses in her day (1930s) were held in lowly regard, with most people lumping them in with prostitutes and other low-lifes.  So her and Juan becoming an item was pretty scandalous, but one has to admit she made a pretty good fist of things despite this. More on her later.

Next stop was the cultural centre of Recoleta, which included the Basilica Nuestra Senora del Pilar

which we popped into for a quiet moment to admire, among other things, the lovely tiling work there.

I was amused, as we walked out, to see the longest feather duster ever in my experience.

Nearby is a huge, and very old, fig tree.

It is so old that its branches reach out a considerable distance.  Someone had the bright idea of including one of them in an art installation.

Also nearby is a building which used to be a convent but its frontage been gussied up a little.

I think it’s wonderful, but apparently people are a bit sniffy about it.

We called in at a café in the area, called La Biela.

At one of its tables there’s another art installation; wax models of two famous writers and intellectuals who spent much time in La Biela,

Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares. Next, we visited the cemetery in Recoleta. I begin to wonder if you, my loyal reader, are worried about our preoccupation with cemeteries, which figure not infrequently in these pages.  This one, morbid fixation or not, is an SSSI – a site of significant sightseeing interest. It is vast,

 

covering 5.5 hectares, or 14 acres in old money, and packed – 4,691vaults, all topped with statuary and other mausoleum-type materials, You can see from the above shot that there is a central spot from which avenues radiate out.

and there are some astonishing mausolea there.  To spare you an endless litany of photos, I’ve put a set on Flickr for you to look at if your pro-cemetery inclinations match ours. Click below to view them, if you like.

Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires, Argentina

I will share one photo, though, which is the main reason for people to flock to this place.

“Duarte?” I hear you cry. “Who the actual fuck?”.

Evita. Her full name was María Eva Duarte de Perón – Duarte was her maiden name. That’s why people come here.  Frankly, I’m buggered if I know how to find it, but Mariana led is there deftly, via some of the 94 other figures of national importance who are also buried there – and pointing out that some mausolea are abandoned, disused and in a poor state.  It’s not possible to cram any new sites in, and existing sites that are for sale fetch huge amounts of money; but the ownership of some of the abandoned sites has been lost and so they moulder away.

After the cemetery, the cathedral.  From the front, it doesn’t look much like a church.

but if you look carefully, you can see a dome just above the pediment, which is a clue. It looks large, and it is.

You can see the beautiful tiling in the photos above, and there’s lots  of it.

and it’s encouraging to note that there’s some restoration work going on in places which need it. There are many, many chapels (I lost count after six) but the main, suitably impressive, one is dedicated to that chap San Martin.

It’s guarded. By guards. Two of them.

but it’s utterly impossible to get a decent photo of the area because of the photographic feeding frenzy going on around it.

At least they weren’t taking selfies, which is the only redeeming feature of the scene.

One of the reasons for the vibrant and varied cultural scene in BA is the amount of immigrations that’s happened over the years – Russians, Polish, French, Italians and more.  A significant aspect of the Italian influence is visible in the bakeries.  We visited a posh one

which has a counter-intuitive name despite its very clear Italian heritage.

(We visited another, less posh, one later, so stay tuned.)

Just nearby is Plaza Mayo. This is nothing to do with a spread, a clinic or an ageing radio DJ, but a place of much significance to the Argentinians; its name come from week-long series of events that took place from May 18 to 25, 1810, in Buenos Aires, The result was the removal of Viceroy Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros and the establishment of a local government, the Primera Junta  on May 25. The May Revolution began the Argentine War of Independence. As similar events occurred in many other cities of the continent, the May Revolution is also considered one of the early events of the Spanish American wars of independence.

Several of the city’s major landmarks are located around the Plaza: the Casa Rosada (home of the executive branch of the federal government)

which features the famous balcony from where Evita gave her “don’t cry for me, Argentina” speech;

the Cathedral, which you’ve already seen; the May Pyramid, the oldest national monument in the city, celebrating the first anniversary of the May Revolution.;

and the Equestrian monument to General Manuel Belgrano.

The stones surrounding the statue were placed in commemoration of Covid victims during the pandemic, as the people were dissatisfied with the government’s response to the pandemic.

Since 1977, the plaza is where the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have congregated with signs and pictures of desaparecidos, their menfolk (husbands, children, sometimes fathers), who were subject to forced disappearance by the Argentine military in the Dirty War, during the National Reorganization Process.  Their protest is permanently marked by the images of white headscarves in the black mosaic.

There’s  a lot of street art in Buenos Aires.  I took a photo of some

whose relevance will be revealed in due course – and lots and lots and lots later – stay with it.

Argentinians love their markets; that’s where they buy most of their food – there are no big supermarkets in BA. Mariana took us through the very considerable San Telmo market, where you can buy produce and also eat at the many establishments there.

Neighbouring San Telmo is La Boca, “The Mouth”, where the port is.

It’s also a place where the buildings become the street art.

It’s an extraordinary outpouring of colour. To save you having to scroll through dozens of photos, I’ve put them in a separate Flickr album, or you can click the image below.

Street Scenes at La Boca, Buenos Aires, Argentina

One building is a popular attraction; Caminito.

On (queueing up and) payment of the requisite sum, you can go upstairs and have your photo taken beside Lionel Messi.

(It’s not the real Messi; just another fine Messi you can get into.)

Other street art in La Boca is plentiful – it even extends to the sides of buildings

and a local football stadium.  When the builders were choosing the decor, they decided to use the colours of the next ship to arrive.  It was

Swedish.

La Boca is also where we visited the non-posh Italian bakery.

Among other things they offer “amarchistic” baked goods.  I’d show you them, but that would be a picture of food and therefore Not Allowed; but bakers slyly created items that mocked the police, education, church and other elements of society – pastries called “facturas”, the word means “bill”, so emphasising the need for crafts such as baking to be recognised at their full value.

The above hits the highlights of our five hours of touring Buenos Aires.  It’s not exhaustive, but I hope it gives an impression of how varied it is; we only covered a few areas, and there would be much more to see had we the time.

We did do a few other things in the city, and the narrative at this point turns non-linear; a couple of days later, we visited one of Buenos Aires’s most famous buildings – El Ateneo. It was only a 10-minute stroll from our hotel and on the way I took some snaps of a couple of the street kiosks which are everywhere in Recoleta

and one of the rather stylish poster stands that dot the place as well,

reminiscent of the sort of art nouveau street décor one might find in Paris.

El Ateneo is a remarkable place – a theatre which has been repurposed as a book shop – an enormous, enormously stylish bookshop.

Just entering it shows what a stylish place it is.

Then you go through to the main area and get hit by a simply awesome sight.

This is the view from the second floor over the main part of the building as you look towards the stage.

Isn’t that just – fantastic?

It is.

And yet people can’t set eyes on this vision of wonderfulness without thinking that it would look better with them in it.

Fuck, it annoys me.

The stage

is a café

where we had coffee and alfajores, served by a nice local lass called, counterintuitively, Brenda. The ceiling above is a thing of joy

and other theatreish areas are used for other bookshopish things.

The place is simply stunning, and a decent way to end a post about what we’d seen in touring around this remarkable, scruffy, stylish, imposing, disorganised city.

We also did a couple of evening things in BA, since we had three days here. I will write about them in my valedictory post from this trip. But the middle day of our three in the area held the prospect of another Thing To Do in Buenos Aires, which is – to leave it.

Come back later and find out what that means, eh?

After the Camino, part I – Santiago

Sunday 1 October 2023 – I hope you’ll forgive a couple of days of not posting updates, but I haven’t had a lot of time, what with having Nice Lunches and that. After finishing the Camino last Thursday, we had three nights’ stay in Santiago before moving on. The first day we had a guided tour of the city; the second was spent on a day trip that included two other key Camino destinations. This post is about our time actually spent in the city. The photos are selected from pictures taken on the evening after we finished walking, during our guided tour and after it; no particular order, no particular theme, but I wanted to try to give some impression of the city.

Which is quite overwhelming. Getting back to dealing (a) with life in a bustling city after six weeks in the wilderness and (b) the sheer amount of detail, history and massive religious buildings was quite tricky. But here goes….

Let’s start with some statistics. These were reeled off by our guide, Joaquin,

among a vast gout of information which meant that our brains were full after only about 10 minutes.

Despite its feeling of huge size, Santiago is by no means the largest of the cities we passed through. Burgos has 350,000 residents, and León has over 122,000. Santiago has just 90,000 residents, but receives 2 million overnight stays each year, of which over 300,000 are pilgrims. The resulting crowds, buzz and ubiquity of great lumps of religious masonry means that Santiago felt much the largest of the three to me.

At the heart of the city is the cathedral. It is massive, a very imposing presence across the city.

The above video shows it mainly from the west; in front of it you can see a large square, the Praza do Obradoiro, which is where today’s pilgrims tend to end their Camino. There are also squares on the other three sides: North, the Praza de Inmaculada, the historical end of the Camino, where we bade farewell to Susan and Bob;

with its stunningly intricate façade;

and Praza da Quitana, to the East (pay attention, now; we’ll be returning here later).

To the south of the main bulk of the cathedral lies Praza das Praterias and the cloisters, which we visited as part of our time with Joaquin.

One interesting fact came out of the welter that Joaquin deluged us with – atop one tower is a pyramid shape influenced by the architect’s visit to Mexico where he saw Mayan pyramids. The other tower around the cloister is similarly Aztec-influenced.

In the centre of the cloister courtyard is a huge stone bowl, made in the Romanesque style,

which used to stand in the square to the north of the cathedral – the historical end of the pilgrimage. Its purpose was to enable pilgrims to finally wash and purify themselves as part of their pilgrimage. There were four parts to the ritual:

  1. Wash and purify
  2. Burn the old pilgrim’s robes
  3. Don fresh white robes
  4. Finally wear the cockle shell that the pilgrim had acquired from shell sellers (in the city, rather than by the sea shore)

This then granted a “plenary indulgence” – forgiveness for all past sins. I’ll return to this topic later as well, so better keep paying attention, here.

The cathedral was built between 1035 and 1211, which is a pretty impressive feat of building when you consider the vast size of it. It has been renovated in the 17th and 18th century with the last titivation being in the baroque style. This means that if you look at the building through the eyes of an architect you can see a great mixture of styles: medieval, romanesque and baroque.

Inside the cathedral is probably the most impressive of the three great Camino cathedrals – Burgos, León and Santiago – at least to my eyes.  The nave is large

whereas in Burgos, for example, the huge number of fancy chapels around the nave actually served to reduce its area and thus its impact. Notice the hortizontal organ pipes – these are are used for sound effects rather than musical notes.  Horizontal pipes were once very common, but almost all other sets have been discarded over the years.

Behind me, as I took the above photo, is the Portico of Glory, the original, and very imposing, entrance to the church. Entrance to the cathedral can be free, but if you want to see the Portico, which has been very carefully and beautifully restored, you have to pay extra and join timed groups of a couple of dozen at a time to stand and marvel at it. That’s all you can do, since the buggers won’t let you take photos of it, or touch it (the sculpted Tree of Jesse bears the marks of millions of pilgrims in the form of the deep imprints of fingers and thumb – but one can no longer place ones fingers into that piece of history).

Another way that the cathedral parts punters from their money concerns the eponymous St. James – Santiago, you’ll remember. His statue forms part of the altar piece, and for an extra consideration, people are allowed to file down into the crypt to view the actual tomb of the Saint, then queue up

and climb up behind the altar to “hug the saint” and whisper their problems to him in the hope of getting inspiration, resolution or absolution.

There is, of course, a wealth of detail in the endless architectural flourishes inside the cathedral. A couple of things stood out for me: some of the original windows at the back of the church,

which predate glass – they are actually wafer-thin slices of alabaster; the original medieval baptismal font, the oldest item in the cathedral, which survived the destruction of the original medieval building by the muslim hordes;

and some of the various chapels around the side of the nave are used for taking confession in various languages.

In my post about Villafranca, I mentioned the concept of Holy Doors – special doors passing through which (along with other flummery) confers a plenary indulgence. The one in the Santiago cathedral is not hugely imposing.

However, if you look at it from the outside, there’s an impressive portal.

Peering through the bars of this portal reveals a dark secret – the portal is kind of a fake.  Through the bars, you see

the back end of the original church building! This was deemed to be not impressive enough, and so the façade was put in place to gussy the whole thing up to give it more gravitas.

Another thing the cathedral is famous for is its thurible, which is vast – it weighs 60kg.

On holy days and religious festivals – and, yes, if one is prepared to stump up the necessary moolah – this incense burner, called the Botafumeiro, becomes the centre of a spectacular piece of theatre after communion has been taken at mass.

We were lucky enough to see this twice in one day – from the side, as above and, earlier in the day, from the back, by the Portico of Glory, which was better musically but not so impressive to see.

Joaquin got us into the cathedral early on in the day, which was good because one could take photos without there being too many crowds around. He also took us into the cloisters and the museum, where, as ever, he drowned us with fascinating facts which neither of us can easily remember. Taking of photos in the museum is not allowed (yawn), but I managed to sneak one shot of a prized item,

an alabaster-and-wood altar piece depicting the life of St. James. This is a pilgrimage offering from the 1456 Holy Year of Compostela carved in Nottinghamshire at the behest of “Johanes Gudguar” (thought to be the English priest John Goodyear from the Isle of Wight).

Outside the cathedral, as you can imagine, there’s an ongoing hive of activity, particularly on the huge western square, with pilgrims arriving, sometimes en masse, like this bunch of schoolkids who had just been on a one-day “pilgrimage”

There’s often a piper.

Bordering this western square,

are the Town Hall (on the left above) and the Hospital Real de Santiago de Compostela. This is now a posh Parador Hotel with an impressive entrance with bouncers an’ everyfink

but once it really was a hospital intended for pilgrims.  It’s a regrettable fact that around half of pilgrims never made it to Santiago, having died en route, or been killed, or any one of a number of causes. Having arrived in Santiago, a surprisingly large proprortion of them fell sick and many of them died, too – hence the need for the hospital. Originally pilgrims might sleep in the cathedral – women upstairs, men downstairs – but this became intolerable (I’ve heard it said that the huge incense burner was a defense against the smell!) and the hospital took over the brunt of this care.  Not all of them survived this care, so, conveniently next door to the Hospital is the Igrexa de San Frutuoso, which is where the bodies went – a funerary church.

Another interesting nugget from Joaquin was that pilgrims who had arrived safe and well often simply stayed in Santiago – I had assumed that they would just go back to where they came from, but this was apparently not the case. So there developed language-based communities of pilgrims across the the city, with French pigrims congregating in one part, Germans in another and so on.

One final piece of cathedraliana: the lightning conductors. There are three in the squares around the cathedral, and at street level they are lead into concrete posts.  In the Quintana square (remember that one?) after dark, the street lighting leads to an interesting illusion:

called the “Secret Pilgrim”. See?  It was worth paying attention, after all.

Other religious buildings that we noted included the Franciscan Church, just down from our hotel.

To the left in the picture above, you can see a remnant of the old city walls, with the church

therefore being outside the walls – no room for Franciscans in the city, it appears. On the other hand, just outside the cathedral and hence inside the city walls, is the Benedictine Monastery, Mosteiro de San Martiño Pinario.  This is so huge that it took me some time to realise that the front, by the cathedral

and the side, considerably nearer our hotel

were actually both parts of the same complex. The monks were once very rich and influential. so between 1835 and 1837, a series of decrees from Juan Álvarez Mendizábal was published, which confiscated, without compensation, monastic land estates. Well, if the dissolution of the monasteries was good enough for Henry VIII, it’s good enough for anyone, that’s clear.

Another subject that Joaquin covered was the pre-Roman history of Santiago, which means Celtic.  Something I hadn’t appreciated until walking the Camino was the extent of Celtic population and culture in Spain. Celtic presence may date back as far as the 6th century BC, until their influence was subsumed by the Roman Empire, starting from about the second century BC. There’s still evidence of Celtic culture in the presence of decorative materials (particularly jet) showing Celtic symbols

including a particular Celtic protective gesture to ward off evil.

Other things we saw included the market, Mercado de Abastos

the courtyard of the city library, which has a lovely cloisters

and features a statue of Alonso III de Fonseca, a Galician archbishop and politician and a major supporter of the university of Santiago de Compostela. He is depicted in a pose of deep thought

and not on his mobile phone, after all.

We wandered around other parts of the city, which is handsome

and quite busy in all the areas around the cathedral.  We even tried some shopping, as we wanted to buy for friends some of the so-called “Santiago Cake“, the almond cake with the St. James cross outlined on it, which is ubiquitous in these here parts. Seeking out an artisanal shop, we were spoiled for choice

but were allowed a taste test, which was nice of them.

This has only scratched the surface of our time in the city. For example, we had two Very Nice Lunches (a major factor in me not posting before now), at Asador Gonzaba where they served us 95% of a cow, and Casa Marcelo, where they served us what they chose; both very fine meals from very fine establishments. And we walked around for some 12km, almost none of which was on the straight and level – it’s quite the uppy and downy place.

As well as wandering the city, we had, as I mentioned earlier, a day trip to, inter alia, two important Camino destinations. It was an interesting trip and I’ll post about it in the next thrilling instalment. I bet you can’t wait, eh?

 

 

 

Three days in Boston

Tuesday 13 to Thursday 15 June 2023 – Both Jane and I have visited Boston before, but some three decades ago, and then, in my case, for a very short visit. Although short, it established Boston as one of my favourite American cities.  It’s compact enough to explore on foot, has considerable charm and, of course, a huge place in the history of the United States of America. (As an Englishman, I’m not bitter. Not at all. No, really.)

So we were both interested to visit and revisit the city, and it turns out that three days is a good length of time to spend exploring all the parts that are within walking distance of the centre.  One could actually spend more time there and still find new and interesting things to see and to do, but three days is all we had. So, we went for a walk. Obviously. Well, several walks, covering about 30 miles in total.

One of the great charms of the place is its architecture. It’s full of handsome and historic buildings, such as the state capitol, Massachusetts State House, one of the oldest state capitols in use,

and the Old State House.

The balcony is  where the Declaration of Independence was first read, on July 18, 1776, by Colonel Thomas Crafts. The declaration is read out every year on July 4th from the same spot.

Elsewhere, there are other fine buildings

with fine exteriors and, indeed, interiors.  Possibly the finest of these was something we saw courtesy of a photo tour, an offering from https://photowalks.com/  – the courtyard and interior of the Boston Public Library.

The library is on Copley Square, which offers various points of interest, at least to me.  The Old South Church pictured above is a wonderful building – Victorian Gothic with some inspiration from Venice. Its interior is a good match, too.

It features a wonderful display of stained glass.

The other significant church on Copley Square is Trinity Church.

Above is a photo of it reflected in the glassware that sheaths the Hancock Tower – still Boston’s tallest building, even after nearly 50 years – more of which later.  The church itself gives an opportunity for some nerdish photographical musing.  I took a photo with my Nikon Z6 and also with my Samsung Galaxy phone. The picture is towards the light, which makes it tricky to capture, as it’s very high-contrast.

The Nikon version is processed from a RAW image, which theoretically gives the best chance to get a top quality final version. Corrected verticals aside, the Samsung image is direct from the phone.  It’s a great demonstration of how advanced computational photography is becoming, as it’s coped very gracefully with a high-contrast situation and presented a very attractive image.

Anyway, we went inside.  This church also has a striking interior.

and another very fine display of stained glass.

The Hancock Tower gave me an opportunity to try to recreate a photo that I had taken on my previous visit in 1990.  Back then, the Hancock Tower was relatively new, having been completed in 1976.  That is, eventually completed in 1976, after teething problems which delayed it by five years.  One of the tower’s USPs is that it’s sheathed entirely in blue glass.  Therein lies a tale, because during construction several of the huge (500-lb, 4ft x 11ft) panes of glass actually fell from the building, and all 10,344 panes had to be replaced.  I bet the insurers were livid. More details can be found in the tower’s Wiki entry.

It’s always been A Thing to take a photo of the tower using reflection to create the illusion of the edge of the tower disappearing.  So Jane and I spent a non-trivial amount of time loitering on the pavement whilst we waited for the sun to shine and the bloody buses and other traffic to get out of the way to enable a second shot to compare with the one from 1990.  Here are the two versions, side by side.

I was a little luckier with the weather three decades ago, but it was a fun experiment to try again – and the new photo shows some of the development that has gone on in central Boston over the years.

Copley Square is at the periphery of an area of Boston called Back Bay, which is actually land reclaimed from the Charles River. It borders another area called Beacon Hill.  Both areas have a great deal of charm, and we spent much time, both on the photo tour and on other occasions, walking around these pleasant bits of Boston.

The whole area, basically south of the Charles River, is a pleasure to walk around, with riverside scenes,

and miscellaneous other vignettes.

The other main thing we had to in this area was to visit View Boston, a chance to ascend the 52 stories of the Prudential Building and see the city from the top floor. As you can imagine, there are some great views.

The day we visited was billed as the opening day of View Boston and we were very excited to be able to pay for the privilege of going to the top of the Prudential Center.  However, it was sparsely attended, which we hadn’t expected, and when I proudly shared some photos on social media, various friends mentioned that they, too, had seen the exact same views, so the occasion wasn’t as exclusive as I had thought.  However, View Boston did have a couple of treats for us.  One was a cocktail in the 50th floor cocktail bar, enhanced somewhat by the availability of Gunpowder Gin; and the other was a very impressive 3D model, which is brought to life with projected illuminations of various sorts, illustrating the days, or the seasons, or other features of the city, such as the Boston Marathon or the success of the Red Sox.

If you refer back to the map at the top of this post (you don’t have to – I’ll explain here), you’ll see that although we spent a fair proportion of our mileage around Back Bay and Beacon Hill, we did venture further afield.

One of the Things One Simply Must Do Whilst In Boston is, of course, to walk the Freedom Trail. a 2.5-mile path past a collection of museums, churches, meeting houses, burying grounds, parks, a ship, and historic markers that tell the story of the American Revolution. It’s marked out in the pavements, typically as a narrow line of bricks. It starts at the Massachusetts State House (which gives the opportunity for a schoolboy snigger),

runs through Boston Common

passes the Old State House (see above) and the Old City Hall

and ends at the Bunker Hill memorial obelisk.  On the way, one can learn about Paul Revere and his famous (indeed, revered) ride (and see his house), see Benjamin Franklin’s final resting place, and hear other famous names associated with the War of Independence, such as Samuel Adams.  No, not that Samuel Adams, he of the excellent local beer, but his son, who was an excellent political activist – a founding father of the United States, no less – but a rotten businessman, as the brewery went bust under his stewardship.

Walking the path, past streets of interesting-looking houses,

on the way to Bunker Hill, we passed USS Constitution,

which is nicknamed “Old Ironsides” despite the hull being constructed of wood, because an incoming cannonball bounced off. Entry is free and one can go below decks which is interesting and slightly challenging for anyone over about 5′ 9″.

We also diverted a little to take a look inside the Liberty Hotel.

The interesting part of the hotel is housed in the slight forbidding-looking grey building, which used to be the city prison, hence the ironic naming of it as the Liberty Hotel, and enabling the management to have bars inside it called “Clink” and “Alibi”.  The atrium is very ritzy.

Tempting as it was to stop for a drink, we pressed on and actually had a coffee in the very pleasant Beacon Hill Books and Café, which, like the Liberty Hotel atrium, was a recommendation from Saba, who runs the Photo Tour we did.

The other area of Boston we explored was around the seaport and harbour, which is a worthwhile expedition, leading as it does past some interesting sights.

We walked past what was clearly an artwork, but which wasn’t immediately engaging.

It’s by David von Schlegell and is called “Untitled Landscape”, which doesn’t give much of a clue, and consists of four large pieces of stainless steel facing each other at obtuse angles. Schlegell (I quote someone else’s blurb here) “intended to create objects of such a scale that could relate buildings, bridges, and other large objects”. Go figure.

However, I accidentally took a mobile phone photo of it directly from the side and all of a sudden

it was rather more interesting.

In our peregrinations around the city we saw a lot more, as it’s a very rewarding place to walk around.  But I didn’t want to inflict nearly 600 photos on you, so I hope this distillation gives you a good feeling for the parts of the city we covered, even if it’s not comprehensive.

I’m writing this from the depths of the New Hampshire countryside (seriously – if out walking we have been advised to stick to the roads, because Bears) and when we move on from here we’ll head to Cape Cod, a place I’ve heard much about but never visited.  If you keep your eye on these pages, you can follow us and I hope to see you again in due course.