Boston, Monday, Day One: City Tour, free evening

We got into town just in time for lunch, starting of course with Boston Lettuce.  Then we became total tourists and boarded our own amphibious vehicle for a "Duck Tour" of Boston.

We entered the Charles River from a ramp.  We shared the river with sailboats, kayaks and cormorants and geese.  This wooden dock is the last of its kind and will soon disappear.

Top:  Statue of Boston Mayor James Michael Curley, the "Rascal King," mingles with pedestrians.  The USS Constitution, "old ironsides," at anchor.
Below:  The Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge, part of The Big Dig, is one of the widest cable-stayed bridges in the world and the route out of Boston to the north.

Architecture good and bad:  Stunning glass tower designed to reflect the buildings around it.
Boston City Hall, nicknamed "the inverted pyramid," voted "the ugliest building in the world" in a casual online poll by a travel agency in 2008.  The name stuck.