A Nightingale Sang in Copley Square

 

This was the view from our first hotel in Boston, The Westin at Copley Square.  By the way, the subway drivers pronounced it “Cop-el-y” instead of my way “Cop ly”. Tomato, tomato.  Having booked this room on Hotwire, we assumed we’d have a room with a view of the elevator shaft or the traffic rushing by on Interstate 90.  Our view was awesome with only a view of downtown missing as it was blocked by the John Hancock Tower.  That’s the Charles River on top and if you squint you can even see the two towers of the Zakim Bridge.

We did use our binoculars to see if anything suspicious was going on in the John Hancock tower.  Designed by famed architect I.M. Pei, when it was first built, the glass panels began to fall off crashing down on the streets below.  They corrected the swaying problems of the tower and replaced all of the glass.

Looking this way we had a great view of I-90 and the bay off in the distance.  I was disappointed to not see very much traffic congestion on the highway. Maybe more people ride buses and subways since parking is so elusive and costly.

The room was standard above average nice.  You can read Sue’s official review on Trip Advisor of this room as well as nearly every room we’ve ever stayed in.  I’ll say this much: that wing chair was ergonomically and aggressively incorrect.

We were on the 15th floor and as it turned out, as predicted by Sue, the Minnesota Twins were most likely staying in this same hotel.  Sue read it on the internet: “When in Boston, the Twins usually stay at the Westin in Copely Square” (The Internets, 2014).

We found a tired Minnesotan in the room.

From Copely Square, the Westin also resembles a towering monster.  That’s the Boston Public Library on the right.

The green and orange lines are two subway lines that came within a block and two blocks of our hotel.  The green line was so useful, we never used the orange line.  The giant circle centered on the Copley station shows you what is easily walkable in a few minutes.  Urban planners know that if a bus stop, for example is outside of your walkable circle, you probably will find a different way of commuting.

Here’s the three buildings of Quincy marketplace just behind Faneuil Hall. . .

. . .where I had my first bowl of Clam Chowdah (Chowder) in a bread bowl.  De-lish.

Cray plaza and st paul prep

Frogtown near to the Capitol

Ready for Superbowl 2018

stadium village station

Green line

To The Lighthouse

 

Susan brought the cats home yesterday from their fortnight in the country.  Now they appear to be taking a vacation to recover from their vacation.  They enjoyed the new cat food dishes that we brought them from Portland, Maine.  Our cats have always had exotic cat food dishes from such places as Japan, Target, Chinatown in Philadelphia, and Chinatown in Vancouver.  We missed out on not visiting Chinatown in Boston.  Another time.

Sue took this photo of me driving up Cadillac Mountain on a windy road with plenty of switchbacks.

 

Her reaction to not only my driving but also my antics such as this . . .

Wheee!   By they way, our rental car was a brand new Italian sports car, a (Kia) Forte.  Maybe it was more of a mezzoforte but a good solid and reliable ride.  We put about 500 miles on that little roadster.

Here is the long pier out to the lighthouse in Rockland, Maine.  The camera must have been set to “vivid” because I don’t remember it looking so bright and crisp.

This was an 0.8 mile walk over very uneven granite puzzle piece slabs.

You kind of had to watch where you were going.

Here is the harbor of Rockland. . .

. . . with the occasional tourist boat sailing by.

The light house on the end of this pier still operates but is now fully automated.  Most light houses have fog sensors that activate the fog horns in addition to the lights.

The lighthouse keepers stayed in this cute little house.

I thought they could make some extra money by renting it out to tourists.

Apparently you can take lobster boat cruises, too!

back of the house

I traded shifts today so I could be off to play a concert with the town band at Kaposia Days, our town’s festival.  We may even go to see the fireworks tonight at 10:01pm.  This morning we walked to and from church as if we were walking to a preaching point in the Iringa countryside.

Fun With Tides

I included this graphic from howstuffworks.com to remind all of us land lovers how the tides work.  In the situations where the sun, moon and earth are all lined up, the tidal differences can be more extreme and when the moon and the sun are at right angles to the earth, the tides can be smaller. Steve, our B and B owner told us the tides in Bar Harbor gave them an 11 foot difference in water levels every 6 hours and 12 minutes.  I just read there is a bay in Canada that has a 50 foot difference in water levels between low and high tides!  Also, tides in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean are smaller than in the big boy oceans.

This is a sand bar that runs between the town of bar harbor and an island about a quarter mile away.  During low tide, pictured here, you can walk across.  If you happened to live on the island, you would have two opportunities each day to walk across.  Since the difference between low and high tides is 6 hours and 12 minutes, you would have to become familiar with how fast the water level rises and if you have time to hustle across once the sand bar starts to shrink.  Steve said if you are on the island and you start to notice the sand bar shrinking, it is time to head across.

I commented to Sue that this sand bar is smoother and more road-like than most of the roads we drove on in Tanzania!

 This is the three quarter mile pier we walked out on in Rockland to get to the historic light house.  This was low tide.  If the tide were high and there were waves, I would have thought this a dangerous pier to stroll on.

 Low tide in Lincolnville

I remember the tides in Mississippi in the Gulf of Mexico when I was there as a six year old with Granny and Grandad Yankee.  I remember walking out really far with Granny during low tide.

This low tide photo is right next to the sandbar.  Many of the piers float with movable ramps to account for the 11 foot swing in the water levels.  Fun stuff.

Doug in "full Christoph" mode watching the US-Germany soccer game

Where Mountains Meet the Sea

 

We got back to Minnesota last evening ending with an extended bus ride from the airport—several river-area roads are closed because of the floods making other roads busier than usual.  We still were able to connect to Makiko’s 68 bus that dropped us off 1/2 block from our house.  These photos are from the Gorham Trail hike in Acadia National Park on Maine’s Mount Desert Island.

This hike was described in the literature as “moderate” difficulty with an optional Cadillac Cliffs detour that we explored.  This was the more difficult part of the hike—difficult but not dangerous.  Our hiking mantra has always been “hike until it gets dangerous and then turn around”.

We were reminded of a hike we did in Victoria, Canada that had a sign like this announcing “This is not the summit”.  Sometimes when you are high up in the mountains, you can’t really see if you’re on the highest point or not.

I don’t know what this pose is.  Sue probably asked me to look goofy and/or stupid.  Or, more likely, I naturally assumed a goofy/stupid pose.

We met some Houston people on this mountain, too.

Asticou, the bed and breakfast fat cat

I’ll talk about the tides in a later post but for some reason, we seemed to see a lot of low tide in our time on the Maine coast.

This is on top of Cadillac mountain at around 1200 feet above sea level.  We drove up here.  Apparently, if you stand here at sunrise, you are the first to see the sunrise on the eastern seaboard of the US.  The name Cadillac comes from a French explorer and later someone in Detroit also adopted his name for a certain luxury car.  Cruise ships frequent Bar Harbor.  The line in the water is the breakwater.

You can also see the sunset on top of Cadillac Mountain.  Right next to us there was a group of four really loud French-speaking Harley Davidson-riding bikers.  They were probably on a road trip from a French speaking part of Quebec or less likely, they flew over from France and rented some Harleys and bought some used grubby Harley clothing.  They were speaking in very loud French but for some reason broke into English for the filthier words.  An English speaking mother and daughter moved away from them after the first volley of F-bombs.

With a camera it is difficult to show depth and height.  I think this is a view of the “Beehive,” one of the dangerous hikes—more on that later (no, we did not attempt the Beehive).

Camden-Rockport

 

We’re spending a couple of days in the Camden-Rockport-Rockland, Maine area.  There are many Windjammer sailboats here. 

In the spirit of the Oldest, Longest Continuing, First or other descriptive word of everything on this trip, this is the port with the most windjammers in the region.  So now we know. 

We took a hike up to the top of Mount Battie this morning.  A nice woman from Houston noticed Doug’s hat and asked if we were from Texas.  She seemed confused when he said no.  After all, do people who are not from Houston wear Astros caps?  Are there non-Houstonians who are Astros fans?   

We had lunch at a brew pub in Lincolnville where Doug had a beer sampler and Haddock chowder.