Bawston

Lots of food available here.

"Where everybody knows your na-ame/And it pisses down with ra-ain..."

We thought we'd come prepared for the change in climate. We'd packed our cases full of warm clothes and although carrying heavy raincoats around tropical Florida seemed rather incongruous, we knew they would come in handy when we reached autumnal Boston. (And actually we felt quite smug when we were able to wear them on two unseasonably cold nights in Disney.)

Sadly, nothing could quite prepare us for the sudden descent from bright, clear skies through an extra-thick duvet of cloud into a wall of bleak, unrelenting drizzle. After a fairly harrowing bus journey to our hotel, we managed to drag ourselves down the road to enjoy a late lunch of local specialty lobster roll, then promptly returned and shut ourselves in for the rest of the day.

Lest you feel too sorry for us, I should mention that we were upgraded to a ginormous eighteenth-floor suite. Married life can only go downhill from here.

Furthermore, the next day stayed totally dry, so we were able to explore historic Boston to our hearts' content. "Historic" of course in the American sense, ie several centuries less so than us, and with the bits about murdering millions of indigenous natives conveniently airbrushed out. I've absorbed enough US culture over the years to know a lot of the names and events covered on Boston's Freedom Trail walk - Paul Revere, Ben Franklin, Samuel Adams, Bunker Hill, etc, some of which admittedly were just from drinking beer. But because we only had a day to see the city, I'm still not much wiser about their full historical context.

Historic Fenway Park

Maybe if we'd had time to look in some of the museums, or taken a tour from a student dressed in ridiculous 18th century garb, I could be regaling you with insights into the Boston Tea Party and Mr Revere's midnight ride (all I can tell you is that he rode a few miles to warn some of his mates that the British were planning an attack, which doesn't sound like that big a deal). But a man needs priorities, and so I dragged my wife on a tour of Fenway Park instead. Home to the Red Sox and built in 1912, it's the oldest baseball park in the country, and has a cool asymmetrical shape from having to fit inside existing neighbourhood streets. It's a unique enough place that even people who don't have a clue about US sports would enjoy strolling around its stands and backrooms, and up the world-famous Green Monster (only in America would they mythologise a moderately big wall).

Also informative was the audio tour at the top of the Prudential Tower, one of Boston's tallest buildings. This arguably provides as good an overview of the city's heritage, landscape and major cultural landmarks as you could find, and because we were lucky enough to be up there on a clear day with the sun finally peeking through the clouds, the views were fantastic. The relative lack of skyscrapers also helps in that regard. It's great to be able to trace the city's evolution around the contours of the Atlantic coastline, taking in the harbour's little set of islands, and particularly watching planes come and go at Logan Airport, which is perched on its own little peninsula only a couple of miles from downtown.

Obligatory skyline shot

At ground level, Boston rewards just walking around and taking things in. Generally it feels old-fashioned (again, in an American way), lots of pretty buildings from days gone by, churches dotted here and there, the greenery of the Common right in the middle of town, the tree-lined avenues of Back Bay, which contrast nicely with the winding, narrower streets of the North End. The latter district is predominantly Italian, but we had a fantastic breakfast at North Street Grille, with its menu full of all conceivable flavours of french toasts and pancakes.

You'll also find an awful lot of pubs trading on the city's Irish connections, some of which seem reasonably authentic, whereas others have clearly hitched onto a lucrative bandwagon. And then inevitably there's the Cheers bar - actually there are now two, after someone decided they might as well build another one in Quincey Market right in the city centre, even though it blatantly resembles the TV version neither from inside nor out.

The real(ish) Cheers bar.

One word to sum Boston up would be modest. Despite having a rich grab-bag of identities to sell to tourists - Harvard, MIT and loads of lesser seats of learning are here or nearby, great seafood, successful sports teams, the aforementioned Irish thing - it didn't feel overly showy or brash. Perhaps this is why the rivalry between the Red Sox and the hated New York Yankees is so enduring.

Speaking of which... final honeymoon post will be up shortly.