A day on the town

Wednesday Aug. 3, 2011. 75 degrees, partly sunny, simply a gorgeous, picture book day. I had just come back from the eye doctor. My first eye exam ever. I knew it was time. I knew I needed real glasses. I shot the works. Transition lenses and so on. Anyway such a day should not be wasted by sitting indoors so I rang up my friend Dave. Dave is retired (boy that sounds good) and maybe he had a suggestion as to something to do that didn't cost much since I had just dropped a bundle. He suggested the Boston Public Library. Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia as I am too lazy to do all the research myself.
  
"The Boston Public Library (est.1848) is a municipal public library system in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It was the first publicly supported municipal library in the United States, the first large library open to the public in the United States, and the first public library to allow people to borrow books and other materials and take them home to read and use."

  Above is one of 4 buildings. It's a beautiful place. On the way in, by public transportation, there were tourists who were absolutely delighted when they heard an announcement over the p.a.
"Please step to the rear of the cah."
This women couldn't contain herself, "He said cah!"
Before we actually went into the library we had lunch at Pizzeria Uno. Not pizza but burgers. It was very good except for the challa bun which is a fine bun in itself but much too soft to handle a burger. Still it was tasty, if messy and our waitress was a complete babe!

It was cloudy when we got there but it cleared up quickly.

The entrance.

This is at the top of the stairs from the previous photo. I had to stich three photos together to get this shot. Well my photo program did.

 A mural depicting early cell phone use.

The courtyard.

  As I said it was a wonderful day. We just scratched the surface of the library. There was a terrific civil war exhibit featuring newspapers of the day, artifacts, period maps and so on. When we left we made our way up the street to the public gardens. There were plenty of tourists around. You could hear all kinds of languages, accents and people were posing for pictures. The Public Gardens were in full bloom.

George Washington surrounded by palm trees in the Public Gardens. Palm trees in Boston?

The Swan Boats. 

Walking away from the library.

Another stitched together picture.

A building called The Berkeley known locally as the wedding cake building.

The John Hancock Tower.

The base of the tower.

And finally the Make Way For Ducklings statues on the Public Gardens are always a hit with the kids. The statues were based on a children's book written in 1941. 

The above pictures are in a pretty random order. There are more that I may post on my Windows photo album but these are the gist of them. There are many of the John Hancock Tower because it's so imposing in the area. The only other tall building is about a mile up the street. I was there a few weeks ago. The rest are all in the financial district about 4 miles away. By the way this entire section of Boston is called the Back Bay because this is all landfill.

Now we come to selected short subjects. That is two little movies. They are just as random as the pictures. The first one is of the library. The second is just walking up the street towards the Gardens. I wish I had spent more time in the gardens because it was just beautiful. Everything was in full bloom. Street musicians were about. People were lounging on the grass. Kids were playing and tourist were busy snapping pictures. Okay feature number one.

 

Feature number two is just us walking up the street to the Gardens.

This post has taken me a long time. I started on Wednesday night and here it is Friday. Still I thank all of you who have been loyal to me. I know my appearances have been sporadic back that's the the way things are going right now.

OK. If I want to wear any clothes to work tomorrow I have to do some laundry. I'm off. Some  say way off. In any event...

I'm outta here.