Northeast Passage Part Three

Day four of our trip at sea started with us not at sea, but rather tied to a wharf in Boston. We'd have a second, short day in Boston before leaving early in the afternoon. So, today we spent the entire day, abbreviated as it was, making Mary's wishes come true and visiting the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum. This is the art gallery that was famous some years back, if memory serves, for a daring robbery that snagged several masterpieces. Well, maybe not all that daring, as apparently at the time the museum had neither a working alarm system nor more than two night guards. Compounding the loss was the fact that the artworks stolen were not insured under the rubric that they were "priceless," a term I'm sure didn't bother the thieves much at all.

So anyhow the Gardner museum was built to house one woman's art collection and it incorporates art and architectural details from many different periods of history. Some people collect Beanie Babies, others cow shaped cream pitchers. Mrs. Gardner seemingly decided to collect everything else. One stipulation of her bequest is that the house/museum was to be left just as she designed it so there a number of empty frames where the masterpieces were stolen on display. The drawback of the bequest is that several rooms are so dimly lit that it's almost impossible to really see the art. Mary enjoyed her visit so it was worthwhile.

After concluding our visit at the Gardner we walked back to the locale where we were supposed to catch the Trolley back into downtown. We were warned that the trolley would only pick up from our location once an hour and we mistakenly believed that would mean something like every hour on the hour, much like when we had been dropped off. The correct answer turned out to be maybe 10 minutes before or after the hour, depending on whim of the driver, or so was the conclusion we drew as we caught a glimpse of the back end of the Trolley as it drove away while we were walking up to the stop. At ten minutes to the hour.

So we decided to sample the delights of the Boston light rail system which also stopped right next to where the trolley left us, bereft. It turned out to be completely painless and only cost a couple of dollars each to deliver us back downtown. We consulted our guides and quickly settled on Legal Seafood for lunch. Mary tells me Legal Seafood is a famous local restaurant that she had heard about and that everyone raves about.

Service was a little slow and scattered perhaps because the place was jammed even at 2:00 pm. Still the meal that followed made the reasons for the restaurant patron scrum quickly apparent. I had what was undoubtedly the single best clam chowdah I have ever had. My scrod wasn't quite as successful, though that might be because it was not served in a dish swimming in butter as I remembered the dish from my youth. What it lacked in mouthwatering yummy goodness it more than made up by extending the time between visits to the doctor to get my arteries unclogged.

Mary skipped the appetizers so she could indulge in a full platter of fish and chips. She thought they were pretty good with an entirely nongreasy mouthfeel and very fresh fish. She did not seem much put out by the lack of mushy peas to put on top. Strange girl.

Back on ship for a quick rest before we leave Boston and we enjoyed a drink or three as we sailed out of the harbor.

Day 5

Another port day, this time Bar Harbor, Maine. I think that Bar Harbor exists solely for tourists and lobsters and outside of summer and fall the population probably falls by 60 or 70%. It seemed like the main drag was wall to wall souvenir stands though there were a few art galleries and specialty stores squeezed in here and there. We did the only real shopping I think we'll probably do on this trip. Trinkets and geegaws for family, like t-shirts with witty logos ("Surf Maine!") and moose shaped oven mitts. Stuff like that.

And blueberries. Lots of things with blueberries in them, or things that have been stained with blueberries, or that have blueberries pureed and then mixed with mud and made into paperweights. I put my foot down on the subject of blueberry flavored beer, which intrigued Mary quite a bit. She was not intrigued by my refusal to taste it, just by the idea of a blueberry beer.

And that pretty much was it for Bar Harbor. I liked it but there I think most of the best parts were the ones outside tourist town and we just didn't have enough time to get out and check it out. Still the scenery was really quite striking with many of the maples starting to turn a brilliant red. Unfortunately it's obvious that the foliage season is not quite up to the striking levels of years past. Many of the locals seem to blame global warming or the Canadians. I think one can assign an equal level of probability to either theory.

So Bar Harbor was quite nice but really we would have better off if we had taken one of the tours out to Acadia National Park, which we heard from several people was really quite spectacular, even in spite of Canadian climatological meddling. Ah, well it leaves us something to do next time we visit the area, once we run out of the blueberry paperweights.