Last weekend yourstruly and the Escape Artist took a little trip up to Boston — for fun and conquest. Having not been to Boston before, I wasn’t sure what to expect: everyone — or, at least, just about everyone who has made a statement to me about Bostonians — says that the people in Boston are some of the meanest around; and many people have told me that there is “not much to do” in the city. But I was looking forward the trip out of the Concrete Morass no matter what it promised.

Boston is something of a quaint city: it is dwarfed by the size of New York, and it retains a far larger amount of the squat, brick buildings that were built in its early years. In fact, because it is so small — and because of the burying of its central freeway — the old city center is very much still in the core of the visitors’ experience: while not many tourists spend all of their  time in NY caught in the bramble of streets of the pre-grid city, the tourists who visit Boston will spend the vast majority of their days wandering meandering zigzag streets. Part of me appreciated this; part of me appreciated rectilinear modernism. The streets combined with the preserved rowhouses make Boston an architectural gem to walk, especially the old North End. Decay — this is not the highly desirous real estate of SoHo — has set in, and many of the old facades are dingy, rusted, and breaking down. All pleasures to gad-about, and stroll through.

The weather was nice enough that this was possible — another good thing since I was wretchedly sick all weekend. I think I’ve coughed up several gallons of phlegm in the last couple of days. Yes: that was as fun for me to do as for you to imagine it.

But Boston was not all shits, wheezes and giggles. I was struck by how conservative the dress of the city was. Men wore boxy wool sweaters and loafers, and women sported cardigans and khakis. The ‘wholesomeness’ of appearance put me off; perhaps I’ve grown too accustomed to NY’s scraggly hipsters and ragged brooklynites, but the self-conscious decorum of the Bostonians put me ill-at-ease. Of course, I didn’t run into a truly rude person in the whole city, so besides their Republican getup, the people of Boston are agreeable.

On our last day, we took a side-trip up to Cambridge and visited Harvard. What a lovely campus! What a collection of spoilt brats!

We went down to Powell street today and walked around a bit. Powell street is basically indistinguishable from other major metropolitan shopping districts: a smattering a locally owned businesses in between instances of corporate stores like H&M, ALDO, or URBAN OUTFITTERS. I walked up and down Nob Hill to Chinatown and then back; it felt good to use my legs.

Cable cars run from Powell street to Fisherman’s Wharf, and Chinatown is about midway between them. The cars look like relics from the 20s, as they are supposed to. The city keeps them as they are it seems so they can charge an inordinate amount of money for a one way ticket — the thrill of riding a historic trolley car is supposed to make up for overpaying. But when the priggish conductor starts yowling for you to fill in all the standing space you start to wonder if you have been duped.

A little story about Frankfurt, a city with two airports: we get into Frankfurt from Prague via Dresden. It has taken us about eight hours, and we are happy because we have four more to kill before our flight; getting to the airport will eat that nicely, and in the process we’ll grab something snacky and it’ll be time to board. So we go to the information booth put the paper with the airport’s name on it on the desk, and ask how to get to there. The German lady behind the counter gives us directions.

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We came to Tirana via Siranda, having taken the ferry from Corfu. That was a story in itself: after getting on the wrong boat, we fled the port so we didn’t have to pay the crossing fee twice. But nonetheless: Albania looks like California, only in different proportions.

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To travel with the eyes of a tourist is something like looking at the world through the eyes of a child; you have no frame of reference into which to fit the new perceptions you have, and so are forced to encounter them as new, unique.

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In Rome, at the Termini Station metro platform, the nuns are not always nuns. At times they are thieves in disguise. So, while you are being lifted up by the escalator, keep an eye on the two sisters in white who are behind you, because yes, that quick little tug you’ve felt on your back pocket was a hand, and it was hers. Clever ploy, crafty like the devil, or like cats.

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We went to the Uffizi Gallery, waited out in the queue for three hours with all the other foreigners, some from France, some from Mexico, some from Romania. The gallery houses the largest number of ‘masterworks’, in the sense of the old Renaissance, that is Italian, that I’ve seen. The most striking piece — either because of the circumstance of its creator, or because of its primacy in the time I saw it — was the crucifix done by the unknown Master of the Cross, n. 424.

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Despite our having been delayed in arriving to Barcelona, I am glad to have been able to go. The feel of the city is very distinct from that of Madrid; at once kinder, softer, and sunnier. But perhaps not as hot.

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The sidewalks in Lisbon are a mosiacwork of white and black stones, forming stars, waves, or flowers, or some mixture of the three. They are highly polished by the passage of feet, cars (people there seem to have no qualms about hopping there car right up over the curb to park), carts, dogshit, vomit, and other less pleasant leavings, so that, on certain moments during the day the sun reflects back in your face blindingly. Our last day there, it was unbearably hot.

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