Never waste a beautiful day.

What can I say, we've had some absolutely perfect weather and Sunday Aug. 25, was about as perfect as you could ask for. The older I get the more I realize that, if possible, you have to enjoy yourself as much as possible. Most of the time living is devoted to doing something that will help you keep living also known as work.
Work takes up so much of our lives. The last 7 years I have taken up photography as a hobby and that has led me to taking local trips and really discovering my own home area. There are times when I get a day off that I just don't want to do anything or go anywhere. Essentially I just want to get away from people. I see and deal with enough of them during the course of the week. I don't want to be beholding to anyone for anything. On the other hand, when you have a strikingly beautiful day, as Sunday was, you should take advantage of it.

The weatherman had be touting how beautiful Saturday and Sunday were going to be.  I had to work Saturday, and the less said about that the better, but Sunday looked picture perfect. I asked Arlene if she would like to take a second Sunday cruise as we did last Sunday, except this time instead of just cruising up one side of the Charles River and down the other this one would take 90 minutes and go out into the harbor. There's only one of these cruises on Sundays and it's at 9:30 in the morning. Arlene had to work till 9 p.m. on Saturday and she was kind of hemming and hawing about committing to going. I fully understood. We both work for the same company. doing pretty much the same thing only in different stores. Maybe someday I'll tell how we first met. Ok she decides to go. The cruise starts from the same spot as the one we took last week. It's only a few blocks up the street from where I work. The dock is on the back end of a 3 story mall located in a very urban area. It's a confusing area as many places around here are. Boston was decaying 19th century city until around 1960. Overall Boston has done quite well since then. All the big building you will see from the waterfront shots weren't there 40 years ago. And they're still building. One problem is building these buildings on streets that were laid out in the 17 or 1800's. The only area that's laid out in a grid pattern is the back bay because that's all landfill, making the inner harbor or bay the river bank. That area is on the right as you head out towards the harbor. And though I've lived in this area all my life, it struck me for the first time how many bridges there are. Of course there have to be bridges as the river is the natural boundary between Boston and Cambridge and any other city to the north. In the short ride to the harbor we went under about 7 bridges, including the large Zakim Bridge to a small drawbridge. Then there's a canal at a dam with locks, (the bagels were extra)  that gets you into the inner harbor. This not a full tour of the harbor. They kind of hang a right from the river,go by some of the waterfront ,go left and head back towards  the river. That wasn't a complaint. The tour itself is billed as an "Architecture Tour" which it was. Our tour guide was knowledgeable, amusing, and was good at working the crowd. She asked who was from the farthest away. There was a  family from China and a family from India, some Europeans, and people from various states. She then asked if there were any locals aboard. We were the only locals. Some people chuckled when we told them we only lived about 4 miles away.

Some of the pictures you will see will be similar to the ones from last Sunday as we were in the same area for a while, but it was earlier in the day than last week and there wasn't a cloud in the sky.
How could I resist. You will see architecture but I am not as knowledgeable as our guide was so I won't be pointing out significant buildings and locales except for a few obvious ones.
Some people believe that the Vikings were here before the English and the is a Viking carving on the Longfellow Bridge. I didn't notice it the last time.

Here are a few of my favorite shots.

The Bunker Hill Monument, Charlestown.

 

Our first really tall building, completed, I think, in 1965. The 52 story Prudential Building. I always thought it was a bit goofy looking with its little , flat head. Still all the sail boats positioned themselves symmetrically against the park across the river to frame a nice shot. That whole area is landfill.

After the cruise ended we had the problem of finding out how to go from this 3 story mall down into the 3 level parking garage.
Arlene can't do elevators so we had to search for stairs or escalators. We found plenty of emergency exits with stairs and got hopelessly lost in the behind the scenes corridors. we found several exits but they all led to the street. We had to go back inside because you couldn't enter the garage  without a car from the outside. We had to laugh at our  bumbling around as there are more important things to get upset about.

So Sunday was a wonderful gift. We went out to eat. My meal was particularly lackluster but I didn't care. Arlene had an errand to run at 5p.m. After that we drove down to the lakes in the western part of our city to watch the sunset. It was underwhelming but that didn't matter. It was a day well spent.
I'm outta here.