Fenway Park - Home of the Red Sox...

Day 19, Feb 21st

Today was another day I have been looking forward to, the day I tour Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox.

Diane and I both slept a bit longer than we wanted, awaking well after 9am. We flung open the curtains to see what the weather was like and we both thought we were back at Big White. Snow was falling and falling heavily!! We eventually got our stuff together and headed down for brunch at a nice little bakery cafe adjacent to our hotel, Au Bon Pain.

From there we walked to the trolley car tour headquarters which is only a block from where we are staying in the Boston Park Plaza. We purchased trolley car tickets which lets you hop on and off at any of 18 designated stops around the city and surrounding suburban points of interest. I also purchased a Fenway Park Tour ticket at a discounted price. The trolley cars run every 15/20 minutes so there is about 5 of them on the road at one time for the 90 minute route.

By now the snow had stopped, but it was bitterly cold and the stiff breeze cut you in half. It was well in the negatives and you could tell. The trolley rolled up and we jumped on with zero other passengers. The driver was a large guy called Buck who never stopped narrating from the time we got on until the time we got off at Fenway. He surely must have no voice left at the end of each day.

The windows of the trolley car were very dirty, so the pics are not great in a lot of cases, but I managed to get a few decent shots, one of which was very early in our tour, the original Cheers Bar...

We joined the trolley at stop 6 of 18 and the Fenway Park stop was #12, so early in our loop. I took a squillion pics of Fenway and these are a few...

That is Diane in front of the bronze statues of some Red Sox legends. Diane did not do the tour, opting to spend the hour in a nearby cosy Starbucks. The tour started from the Red Sox Team Store. This is a merchandise shop for the Sox which is huge, selling everything you can imagine relating to all things baseball and Red Sox. I was going to get the bottom garment for Mark, my good mate from Melbourne and mad Red Sox fan, but I couldn't get them in XXL...

The tour itself was fantastic. The guide obviously knew every intimate aspect of all things Red Sox, but his spiel was well rehearsed, very humorous and very polished, right down to the constant digs and snipes at the Red Sox sworn arch enemies, the New York Yankees. Here are some of the pics I took from inside the ballpark, spanning around the field from left field stand to right field stand...

Here is the story of the famous 'Green Monster'. Fenway Park is not only the oldest field in the Major Leagues, it is the smallest. On top of that, it has a slightly offset shape and the left field fence is substantially closer than any other fence in major league ballparks. To counteract this, many years ago they built a high wall at the fenceline of left field and you needed to actually hit it over the wall to get a home run. If the ball bounces off the wall it is still 'in play' and the game goes on. In the early days the fence was covered in advertising slogans, but the players complained that with the 'busy' background, they were losing sight of the ball. So the owner cut the sponsors and painted the fence, originally a dark navy blue. Apparently it looked out of place as blue, so they developed a paint in conjunction with a leading paint manufacturer and named it Fen Green. According to the tour guide, the exact makeup of pigments to match Fen Green is a closely guarded secret and only the owner of the Red Sox and the head groundsman for Fenway Park are allowed to purchase the paint. I'd suggest there is a fair bit of licence in that explanation, but I'll run with it anyway.

Anyway, here are the pics of the Green Monster...

Finally, I took a video of the field from ground level seating in left field...



After the tour, which ran for about 75 minutes, Diane was waiting for me at the Team Store. We decided to have a quick coffee to warm up before jumping back and continuing the trolley ride. We had a coffee at Jerry Remy's, a nice big bar/restaurant adjacent to Fenway Park and owned by Jerry Remy, a former Red Sox player and legend.

We must have just missed a trolley as we had about a 20 minute wait to get back on the trolley. It was freezing at the unprotected trolley stop. Finally the trolley turned the corner and fortunately for us, it was our old friend Buck. We continued on the rest of the loop until we finally did the complete loop. A few pics taken on the second half of the trip...

Finally, just to drive home how cold it is here, even the dogs won't go bare footed...

We got back to the hotel to thaw out for an hour before heading off for a chinese meal. When we got there at 6:30, the place was packed and it was a 40-50 minute wait. We decided to wait because the food must be good. As it turns out, we were very close to the Theatre District and that made it peak time as people dined early before heading to a show. However, the food was good and quite reasonably priced.

We are currently bunkered down in our now warm hotel room. When we came in this afternoon, the aircon was pumping out cold air. We called reception and a maintenance man was up within a few minutes and fixed the problem. Apparently it needed resetting. Reasonably early night for us, need to be in a taxi by 7am to the station for the next leg of our trip.

Boston thoughts? We have not had nearly enough time here, only one day really. Lots to see and do if the trolley driver is anybody to go by, but he talks everything up to be good and I guess he would tell people that MtDruitt Westfields was a must see if he was running the same tour in Sydney. Diane and I have decided it would be a city we would like to spend a few days in, so in the years to come if we get back to this part of the world, a few days are on the agenda.

We arrive in New Orleans in 2 days from now, so I'll get two days worth of entries up then. Thanks to all who have left a comment. As you can tell, keeping this up to date is pretty time consuming, but it's a labor of love and I'm enjoying it, but it is nice to get comments so I know at least some people are reading.

Later all...