Whew! Still sweltering here. There's supposed to be a storm and cooler weather coming in for Thursday, which we hope so: it's the day we are going to New York.

Today James and I went up to Boston. We have had a regular routine of going to Harvard Square for lunch and then wandering around afterwards; however, it was a bit too warm to do so. We had reservations for the Boston Duck Tour at 3 p.m. and had to be there at 2:30 to queue. We arrived in town about eleven, then James had to eat, so we decided to stay nearby South Station to make sure we were there on time.

I'd found the perfect answer: the Boston Tea Party Ship, a replica of the brig Beaver which was one of the ships attacked in the Boston Tea Party, was nearby. Well, I overshot it, then we found the way and walked all the way out to see it--only to find out it was closed due to a fire in the exhibit area (the ship itself was fine).

We didn't have enought time at that point to go to Harvard Square and still have time enough to look around, so we decided to go to Quincy Market instead. We could get a drink and visit the quite nice gift shops on the first floor of Fanueil Hall. Last time we were here in June I was surprised that several vendors had a nice assortment of New England/Boston calendars, so I figured that in July they would have the same.

Nope. All they had were Harvard calendars in one small kiosk. Well, pooh.

We ended up going to the Museum of Science (where we would pick up our Duck tour) and looking at their excellent gift shop. James found a bunch of the NASA Mission books which contain all the details of various space missions and bought four after our tour.

The Duck Tour was a blast. The "duck" is actually a World War II land/aquatic vehicle: basically your classic truck base (the trucks you see in every WWII flick transporting supplies, troops, etc.) with an enclosed, boat body and propellors. During your tour (and it depends on which tour you take, the one from Science Park or the one from the Pru on when you enter), your Duck (the vehicle's moniker was actually DUKW, the abbreviation for its military designation), after you've been taken about Beacon Hill, the Common/Public Garden area, the Back Bay, and Government Center, trundles into the water and gives you a nice little cruise on the Charles River as well.

The tourguides on the Duck Tours are "characters," each with his own persona. We had a colonial character, "Paul Reverse," with the usual complement of silly jokes, full of facts and figures. Some of the other characters are dressed in World War II garb, some in wilder outfits: the tour after ours was led by a Viking character, complete with horned cap and fur loincloth and boots.

After the tour we had supper at Quincy Market. A street performer set himself up in the middle of the eating area and was playing a trumpet. Over the years I've heard a lot of these street performers and many of them are wonderful. You hope that soon they are working professionally at making music. This guy wasn't one of them. He tried really hard, but even on the simplest of tunes he hit sour notes.

I usually love to sit and feed the sparrows in Harvard Square for a little while, but we were tired and it was late, so I took the rest of my bread and we went looking for sparrows where we were instead. Most of the birds hanging about Quincy Market are pigeons, but we did manage to attract a few cute little sparrows, too.

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