Our VRBO unit at 1 Cortes Street was tinier than expected but relatively comfortable with A/C, a small fridge, coffeemaker and microwave. Basic cutlery and plates were provided. Its main handicap was the old, dark, and circular staircase to our third floor unit with no elevator. We paid our taxi driver to schlep the suitcases upstairs for us (and downstairs again when we left).
The A/C was a portable unit that was quite noisy. Our first night was snacks from the airport, but we ordered food from a nearby market on the second day and Lizzie met him outside our coded entry and took the delivery of bananas, half and hand, crackers, cheese, salami, sparkling water, and ice cream bars, as we anticipated eating breakfast and lunch out given the heat. Not everything we ordered came as expected, but it would do. We learned the next day that we had a guest mouse who chewed a hole in some of the packaging and helped himself to some of our food. Lizzie had heard something in the night and the next day found chew holes! Never saw the mouse or any trace of him (other than chew holes), so we decided he was a pet.
Day 2 was spent exploring the nearby area of our VRBO and getting our local bearings. It was super hot. Day 3&4 were better and our two main explorations were the fabulous Museum of Fine Arts (worth at least four days to explore it all) and the John F. Kennedy presidential library, which was excellent.
The Museum was so large that we concentrated on the special Van Gogh exhibit (Roulin Family collection) and the regular Americana exhibits (loved the Paul Revere silver collection), but there was so much more we didn’t have time to explore, but had a very good lunch before we wore out and headed back. Just a few of the examples of its contents are:
The following morning found us at the JFK Presidential Library, which was very interesting. It was located along the Bay on the University of Massachusetts campus. I learned more about how close we were to nuclear Armageddon during the Cuban Missile Crisis—hearing minute-by-minute tapes of cabinet meetings with his highly-skilled and knowledgeable advisors—than I had known before. For a handful of hours, it was touch and go on whether the already installed nukes would be launched immediately by the USSR toward all major cities in the US. The negotiations that cooled the crisis were exemplary. It is hard to imagine what kind of world we would have today if JFK had lived to serve his full term and likely another after being re-elected. What a timeline change in world history that would have been. It makes the unproven theoretical conspiracy theory of the USSR connection to Kennedy’s assassin more understandable as Khrushchev must have despised our President (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis). Those of us who lived through the assassination will always remember where we were and what we were doing the moment we heard of the Dallas shooting. I was a high school senior in my brand-new campus’ physics laboratory that morning when Mr. Peterson came from his glass-walled office cubicle connected to the lab where his small TV was on—ashen faced, he told us the news. We all went home (it was the Friday before Thanksgiving week). https://www.jfklibrary.org/
The next day, Saturday, Ebenezer our wonderful taxi driver for the past day also collected us to go to the cruise terminal, and hauled down our luggage before taking us to the pier to board the Zuiderdam, the real focus of our long adventure.
