Cold day in Boston

On the 2nd day of their visit, we took Dewey and Betty into Boston. It was their first time to ride a subway!

We walked through the Commons for as long as we could stand the biting cold air. We found refuge in a coffee shop to thaw our limbs.

The edge of the Shaw memorial overlooking the Commons

The mother duck only had one son in tow this time.

After our break in the coffee shop, we decided to walk about a mile to the Prudential Center (a large mall) where we would catch the Duck Tour. Along the way we passed some of my favorite buildings. I just love the style of this church, and there are many like it in Boston.

We had to wait a while in the mall before our Duck tour started, but it gave us an opportunity to warm up from our mile trek. You may be wondering what a Duck Tour is. Well, it is a tour of Boston in a Duck...obviously. The DUCK is a WWII amphibious vehicle that can drive on land and cruise through water.

When it was time for our tour, we loaded up into the Duck. Sadly, we ended up sitting in the very last seats in the Duck, and the back door was completely open. Normally in the summer, there are no windows on the Duck. During the winter months they button it up with plastic windows, except for the very back. Poor Dewey couldn't take the cold. He moved up to sit with someone else.

 Our guide was great: both informative and funny.  I laughed the whole way. He even mentioned my laughter to me as I got off the Duck. It seems like it might be a strange tour to take, but it is worth doing.

The bridge in the background is the Zakim Bridge, part of the Big Dig project.  The support columns and spires on the bridge are meant to symbolize the Bunker Hill Monument and Boston's shipping history. You can see another Duck in the water too.

After our tour was over we split up for the night. Kyle and Dewey went to the TD Garden to watch the Celtics take on the Oklahoma City Thunder (that's basketball for those sports-challenged folks out there.  The Celtics lost even though Kevin Durant didn't play). Betty and I came home for a nice quiet evening of Sense and Sensibility. All in all, it was a great day, but boy was it cold.