06/17/17 - Day 75 - Boston, MA - Tall Ships Parade

Boston is one of seven ports featured for the 2017 Rendez-Vous Tall Ships Regatta.  

There's around 40 sailboats of various shapes, sizes and ages.  Some are over 100 years old, others built within the last decade.  Some are replicas, others the real thing.  Most if not all appear to be commercial ventures designed to attract adventure tourists to sign up for a trip.  As near as I can figure, the event is a large marketing effort designed to entice folks expose folks to the opportunity to sign up to sail on one of these vessels.

The city participates in the event by allowing the vessels to dock around the port for public tours and setting up outdoor party areas for people to gather, watch, listen to music, eat, drink, shop, etc.  On Saturday all the vessels enter the port in parade formation, most of them fully rigged for sail.  My room mates had a connection at the Legal Seafood harbor side location, so we set up shop on the balcony deck to watch the show.


Several of the larger ships were pretty impressive, even from a distance.








It looks like a few of these ships had sailors lined up along all the masts - they're actually mannequins.  Not sure why they were decorated as such; maybe because the sails were furled.  While we watched we ordered a boat of our own - full of sushi.   It didn't last long.
    

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

08/19/17 - Day 138 - Denver, CO - Pikes Peak

Image
My friend and I took a day to visit the summit of Pike Peak, a well known fourteen thousand foot mountain about two hours south of Denver, just outside Colorado Springs. There are a couple of ways to reach the summit, on foot, by car, or by train.  We took a car to the top which involved a slow, windy drive.  The road was a little more reassuring than the one leading up to Mount Evans as this one actually had some guardrails and fewer sheer drops immediately following a hairpin switchback. Besides the views, Pike's Peak is well know for a couple of races - a death defying rally race where cars fly up and down the same road I averaged about 15mph on and a marathon where runners run up to and down from the peak.  The marathon took place the day we visited.  It probably would have taken me a day to walk up the trail leading to the peak - I have no idea how anyone could run up it.            Pikes Peak was also the in...
Read more

06/24 & 06/25 - Day 81 & 82 - New Hampshire & Maine

Image
A friend of mine from college now lives in New Hampshire.  I got in touch with him and took a short drive up to visit him for the weekend.  We visited a couple of sites in both New Hampshire and southern Maine. Fort McClary - Kittery, ME      Mount Agamenticus - York, ME      Nubble Lighthouse - York, ME Closing out Sunday was an out of this world seafood dinner featuring a lobster boil and mussels.  One of the best meals I've had on this trip.     
Read more

07/16/17 - Day 104 - Chicago, IL - Lincoln Park Conservatory and Zoo

Image
Heading north from Chinatown on the Lakefront Trail, I visited Lincoln Park, home of the Lincoln Park Conservatory and Zoo, both free and open to the public (maybe that's why taxes are so high here.)        The conservatory is an indoor greenhouse with a few different climates featured.  The care takers added a bit of a Jurassic Park theme to the rain forest exhibit with a few dinosaur decorations.   The grounds surrounding facility are well manicured with lots of seasonal flowers. The zoo is right next door to the conservatory. The zoo is quite large and features a large number of animal exhibits.  I was surprised how well it was put together for a free venue.      The lion exhibit was very entertaining as the male lion had a habit of getting up on top of the tallest rock and roaring at the crowd.  I've never witnessed a lion roaring in person, it's one of the most gangster things I've ever seen. ...
Read more