February 28: Flat Stanley tours Boston

Dear Andrew,

Today we got to go into Boston to see some sights! One place we saw a lot of was Dunkin' Donuts. They have these on practically ever corner!


We also saw this church, Old South Church. There are a lot of old churches in Boston! Old South Church was built in 1873, on newly filled-in land. Did you know that more than half of Boston was originally a bay that was filled in with dirt? They call this section of town "Back Bay" because that's what it originally was!


This is part of downtown Boston. They have tons of tall office buildings there. In the background of this picture you can see a blue light coming out of the top of a building. That is actually a weather beacon, telling you the weather:

Steady blue, clear view.
Flashing blue, clouds due.
Steady red, rain ahead.
Flashing red, snow instead.

In baseball season, flashing red means the Red Sox game was cancelled on account of weather, since there isn't usually snow during baseball season. Tonight it was steady blue because of the clear skies we had.

To the right of that building is the John Hancock Tower, the tallest building in Boston. Do you remember who John Hancock was? He was known for his large and fancy signature on the Declaration of Independence. He was also the first governor of Massachusetts.

This is the Boston Public Library. It is the third largest library in America, after the Library of Congress and Harvard University's library system. It houses 15 million books, and was the first library to allow people to borrow books and take them home. Sadly, it was closed when we went, so we couldn't get pictures of the beautiful inside.


Our final stop tonight was the famous Newbury Street, one of the best shopping districts in Boston. It is lined with hundreds of stores, even some that are very, very expensive!


Touring Boston tonight was so much fun! I can't believe it's only been a week since I got here!

Sincerely,