Day Two - Beacon Hill and Graveyards

Dawn’s grey, cold and raining heavily and persistent. A bit disappointing, but we get out determined to make the most of the day, although the rain was the perfect excuse not to. We trudge the Lonely Planet walking tour of Beacon Hill; a beautiful part of town, lovely large mansions, interesting and varied – with the expensive houses of a town with history, and the poorer contrast of the freed slave areas of the north-side, and the slave escape route of Holmes Alley, at the end of Smiths Court. Lunch of Clam Chowder in the Sevens Ale House, better for it beer and friendly Bar man, who worked weekends here, and spent the week at home in Maine, than for its food it has to be said. He tells us that Maine lobster at $9 per 2ib lobster is cheaper than delivered Domino's Pizza at $11. The rain stops and we walk across Boston Common through town to the Quincy Market, past the Irish famine memorial, raised in 1998 since I was here in 1997. We pass the Granary Grave Yard, a dark and grey 2 acre plot of Boston history going back to 1664, surrounded by skyscraper blocks of offices with leafless trees, mud and puddles, surrounded by iron railings, with a few large memorials to well known Bostonians, and the rest marked by headstones – large for adults, small for children, some with a a skull and wings headlining their life time – heightening your own mortality, in the middle of a lively, living, city. After burgers and beer and wine at the 21st amendment Bar, by the Massachusetts State House with its golden dome, then an early night,