Boston

While attending the National Governor's Association (NGA)/Department of Homeland Security, Office of Emergency Management (OEC) Interoperability Conference in Boston, I went for a walk with a friend down a portion of the Freedom Trail. We even paid the fee to walk through Paul Revere's house on they way to the Old North Church.

Boston is a very interesting city. It reminded me of a recent trip to Chicago. Like Chicago, Boston's downtown buildings are built on streets that were designed for the width of horse and buggy traffic. They are a stone's throw apart from one-another (an underhanded toss at that). Layed out within a semi-circular penninsula, the streets are nothing short of mad. There are one-way streets that cut across each other at odd angles, and some of the two-way streets are seperated by just enough median that they've named each direction a different street name. Very confusing. Every once in a while, we ran across a pedesetrian who seemed to obey the traffic signals, but that may have only been incidentally.

Even with the strange traffic layout, the overall effect of walking through the city was wonderful. There is a certain "old world" feel to the streets and buildings. Many of the buildings have obviously been around for a very long time. They were clearly retro-fitted with modern lights and other technology that was not dreamed of when they were constructed.

When we stopped for lunch at a rather large mall (Quincy Market), we were surprised to see an indoor food court that was full of several dozen places to eat, but had so little room that many of the tables for dining were four foot tall and designed for 'standing room only' diners.