I love Boston. It’s no secret that I’m generally not a fan of cities: crowds, confusion, traffic, noise, pollution, mayhem, plus I lack any sense of direction whatsoever so I am constantly lost. Boston, however, isn’t like most cities, and thank goodness for it.
It’s fun to be as local as a non-city resident can be. It’s
fun to help out-of-towners navigate the streets and the bars and the different
parts of town. No T stop directly at Quincy Market? No problem. There are at
least three stops directly accessible. Want to go to Seaport? You’ll have to
hoof it or rent a bike because there are zero T stops directly there. Oh, don’t
even suggest the make-believe silver line that has a stop there – locals know
the silver line is a mere ghost story.
One thing I’ve never done is the Duck Tour. It seems
counter-intuitive to do something that takes me around to all the places I know,
but it also seems like someone who has lived around Boston for as long as I
have should’ve taken at least one tourist-type mad-cap adventure. So, I do.
Unfortunately for our guide, who has the stage-name Justine Time and wears a lovely Fascinator on her head, one of my equally-local friends on this tour and I sit in the front two seats. We didn’t pick those seats; they were our ticket assignments. We add comments quietly, which Justine Time overhears. Yes, James Otis was struck dead by lightning . . . standing in his front doorway, we believe. Yes, this is almost where the Boston Massacre happened. . . but now it’s a major traffic intersection. Bunker Hill – or, perhaps, Breed’s Hill. Hey, it’s the bridge in the opening scene from Boondock Saints. Silly commentary, really.
In the end, we drag our out-of-town friends to some local
touristy places and make sure there are a couple of lobster rolls at the end of
the trip. It feels good to be a tourist in my home city. It’s familiar and
comforting. For someone with zero sense of direction, I like to know where my
roots grow because it’s home, and I won’t ever be directionless.
