Boston; Monday, 02 April, 2018

Without any worrying text messages, and another filling breakfast under my belt I checked out of the hotel and headed down to the harbour.

The original plan was to have a late start to the morning, a slow wander through the city, join the 1pm harbour cruise that I’d booked on the Saturday afternoon and then head back to the hotel and airport. However, with an extra 2 ½ hours to kill now introduced into my itinerary I’d decided to head out earlier and take in the Aquarium.

I was glad I had as it is a very spectacular example – with it’s massive central tank being home to a number of incredible creatures – not least of all their enormous and nearly 100-year-old sea turtle.

Having looked round the aquarium I headed over to the landing stage just in time to join the harbour cruise. The cruise headed out into the start of the harbour islands before heading back into the city via the airport and Charlestown. It was a very interesting tour and with an interesting commentary as we went around.

As we headed back into the harbour I noticed that there was a landing stage for another local ferry service and a quick check online showed that this operates a service out across the bay through all of the islands to the settlement of Hull and then Hingham before heading back, this appeared to be not only a good way of seeing much more of the harbour islands, but also a cheap way of killing nearly two of those extra hours I had.

It was a very interesting ferry ride, though I got the impression that not that many tourists know about it as the person manning the ticket booth was a little surprised when I asked for a round trip coming back straight away!

Back in the city centre I walked up from the harbour to the hotel and collected my luggage before heading back to the subway and out to the airport to catch my, now significantly later, flight home.