It is strange that the final day of our trip turned out to be the hottest. The final tally on temperature was 33°C. In the center of town where everything is either tarmac or stone slabs, it must have been at least 40°C come midday as the stones have heated up so much, they radiated heat from the bottom, as well. It was not pleasant.
What better plan than to leave the city and flee to one of the small islands in the bay. The one island that was reachable by ferry before the official start of summer is called Spectacle Island, which is a bit more than 6 km away from the shore.
This island used to be a landfill site until 1992 when the city of Boston started a megaproject known as the Big Dig. During that project, the interstate 93 highway, which ran through the city was re-routed through a newly-built tunnel and overall the traffic in the center was attempted to be de-congested.
One offshoot of this project was the change of Spectacle island from a landfill site, to a park area with a marina, green areas and walking trails. After 3 weeks in some of the biggest cities in the United States, we felt that a little time in the green was warranted, and let me tell you, it felt gooooood.
Not many people were there. I assume during the summer seasons, you have quite a few families coming over. When we went there were less than 30 people. The island is not big, so there is not that much space for people, but 30 is nothing.
We went on a small hike around the circumference which took us ca. 45 minutes, so yea, the island is small, but this is what we were after, after 3 weeks of skyscrapers, tallest this, biggest that, fastest here, widest there. It was quite hot, but the breeze on the island was very welcome. So we spent the morning and early afternoon there with either walking or relaxing and enjoying the peace and quiet.
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| 3 weeks of America's finest junk food has left its marks on my belly |
For the second part of the day, we took the train once more to Salem where we met up with Al, Hilary, Angus and Cuilin to have another little chat and say our goodbyes before we made our way back to our basement cave to ready ourselves for our trip back to the old country.
Tomorrow will be tough, we will leave here at 17:00, fly 7 hours, arrive at 6:00 CET, which will be for us midnight, and then we will have to drive another 5 hours home to Belgium. Let's see how that pans out ;)
It was a good trip and as usual, writing this little journal helped me structure my thoughts around all the things that we experienced during our time here in the US. With this, I shall end my entries to this blog until most likely our next trip to a foreign land.
Take care, guys, and thanks for reading :)
Johannes
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