Boston to a T

If the very thought of Christmas exhausts you, be glad you're not American. They've had a solid season of eating and spending since Thanksgiving, have survived only to cater for Christmas Day and soon must brace themselves to do their duty by the January sales. Rosemary McLeod went to Boston for Thanksgiving and learnt what Americans mean by Happy Holidays.

By now, Boston could be more than a metre deep in snow, but a few weeks ago it was a bonfire of red and yellow falling leaves, a picture postcard of Americana with the Stars and Stripes flying from old white clapboard houses and the first solitary snowflakes wheeling gently down.

Already people were shopping for Christmas decorations, which went up right after Thanksgiving on November 22 for weeks of universal glitter. Sales have begun: stores have late trading leading up to Christmas and, after that, yet more sales begin. Women were already scrambling after winter coats with 60% mark-downs.

If you like the melancholy blaze of late autumn and old buildings as I do Boston is a beautiful place at Thanksgiving, with its Georgian buildings and the feel of Europe in its meandering, cobblestoned streets. And if you add a love of historic places, this is where America began.

The first Thanksgiving dinner happened hereabouts, according to the legend of the Pilgrims, the turkeys and the friendly local Indians; and the Boston Tea Party, a trigger in the War of Independence against Britain, happened right here in the harbour. Plaques bearing inspiring slogans from great Americans of the past turn up everywhere you can feel like you're stuck in the middle of a high-toned greetings card. And statues of American heroes such as President Abraham Lincoln freeing slaves are around every corner.

You can walk through downtown Boston Common without being hustled and the city has a sedate pace. It's a maze of historic places, all within walking distance of each other and Bostonians jaywalk in the most alarming way. But even here assumptions about history are being challenged.

The Plimoth Plantation, a living museum out of town, began by intending to tell the story of both the Pilgrims who arrived on the Mayflower and the Native Americans they encountered. But colonisation, as it turned out, was hardly cause for celebration from the Native Americans' point of view, and there was a re-think. Signs warn against war-whooping as you approach the Native American area: the Wampanoag people seem ambivalent about theme-parking their own cultural holocaust and some call Thanksgiving their Day of Mourning. The model Puritan village is less complicated.

Try, for another approach at American history, to hear the Boston Classical Orchestra playing in Faneuil Hall. This chamber orchestra isn't just a musical treat; the setting is a capsule of America as it sees itself enlightened, democratic, cultured, noble of purpose. With its stage swathed in red, white and blue bunting and overhung by American flags, you're overlooked by busts of second American President John Adams, a chap who looks eerily like soul singer James Brown, and suffragist Lucy Stone.

The room is awash in classical references and heroic art George Washington with his horse, and the giant "Webster's Reply to Senator Hayne" dealing with the dull-sounding topic of the respective rights of the states and the Federal Government (I guess you had to be there). It's hard to believe, looking at the mostly snowy heads of Boston's classical music fans, that what made Boston famous was revolution.

Elsewhere in the United States, you'll find what happened next. But if you want to learn about the world's great superpower's beliefs and origins and share in its annual celebration of its own dream, there's no better place than this to make a start.

 

WHERE TO EAT

 

A warning: American servings are so vast that you'll probably send back three-quarters of what you're given. And they love rich food. It's taken me weeks to even look at a carton of cream, or anything deep-fried, without feeling queasy.

 

Jasper White's Summer Shack

Family atmosphere, brown paper tablecloths and New England clambake dinners, a whole lobster apiece. Try little neck clams, nine kinds of oyster, soft-shell crabs, and deep-fried whole smelts.

Grafton Street Bar & Grill

Typical American sandwich fare, wraps and pot pies, but try their appetisers; simple, creamy baba ghanoush with toasted flatbread is a standout.

Cambridge One

Does just one thing, well; paper-thin pizzas cooked over charcoal. Go local with its Maine lobster, corn, scallion, parmigiana and cilantro oil topping.

Union Oyster House

The oldest restaurant in the USA and a historic landmark: Louis Phillipe, soon to be King of France, lived upstairs in the late 18th century, teaching French to fashionable women. The oldest part of the building is more than 250 years old, and it has been a restaurant since 1826. Serves Yankee-style seafood, lobster and grilled meats.

Eastern Standard Kitchen & Drinks

Humming restaurant and bar with live gridiron on screen. Highlight is sublime orange-braised pork belly but main courses are all good seasonal American fare. Cocktails a long list of them a speciality.

Cafe Fleuri, at the Langham

Bostonians love its calorie-laden Saturday lunchtime Boston Chocolate Bar, with its chocolate fountain, chocolate soup, mousses, gateaux, signature chocolate croissant pudding, even a chocolate-enriched osso bucco.

Cafe Fleuri's Sunday jazz brunch is an award-winner for chef Mark Sapienza. Buffet tables themed as forest, sea, garden and farm groan with seasonal dishes such as maple-glazed quail stuffed with brioche and candy cap mushrooms, and home-cured duck prosciutto with braised red pears and balsamic syrup.

Traditional Thanksgiving dinner here stars rich lobster stew, pan-roasted foraged wild mushrooms with hasty (corn) pudding, free-range turkey, whipped potatoes, squash served two ways, cranberry, pear and citrus relish, and pumpkin pie with cinnamon chantilly and candied pecans. Hotel cooking in the grand manner.

 

WHERE TO GO

Plimoth Plantation

Near Plymouth, where the Mayflower pilgrims first settled, is this living museum of early American history. Set in park-like grounds, the museum features a replica 1627 English village, staffed by costumed role players who live and work as real characters of the colony, expressing 17th-century viewpoints in the language of the time, and working and living as their namesakes would have. Walk further on to the Wampanoag Homesite, staffed by Native Americans in their period clothing. Enter their dome-shaped traditional wooden dwelling, or wetu, a model of heating efficiency and environmental adaptation, peruse their garden, and see a canoe in the process of being burned out.

There's also a working model of the Mayflower in the complex, staffed by yet more costumed role players.

Savenor's Market

Pay tribute to Julia Child's favourite meat supplier and gourmet butcher where anything's in the freezer from rump of black bear to python and they can even tell you how to cook it.

The Samuel Adams Boston Brewery

This artisan brewery has won shelves of prizes; in its first year alone it was judged best beer in America. Staffed by passionate enthusiasts, it produces seasonal beers as well as its staple lager.

Faneuil Hall

Built in 1742 as a meeting hall (and market downstairs), a plaque records that many meetings were held here during the American Revolution "which kept alive among the people the fires of freedom and stirred them to greater deeds from which fact the hall became known as the cradle of liberty."

Quincy Market

Built in the 19th century behind Faneuil Hall, a vast food hall, and tourist shops where you can maybe resist delights such as cannabis air freshener and "Whodaman?" tongue spray. Thousands of Bostonians attend the lighting of the city's Christmas tree here as Thanksgiving approaches.

The Kings Chapel Burial Ground

Samuel Adams, of beer and American Revolution fame, lies here, along with Paul Revere, whose midnight ride warned outlying colonists of the imminent arrival of British troops. Charming pilgrim slate tombstones from the 18th century feature skulls and crossbones. Above Mrs Sarah Todd, who died in 1777, read, "The sweet remembrance of the just/ Shall flourish when they sleep in dust."

The Parker House Hotel

Home of the Parker House bread roll and the Boston cream pie. Duck into the extravagant foyer of the oldest (1855) continuously operating hotel in the USA. John Wilkes Booth stayed here just before he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln; Malcolm X was a waiter here; Ho Chi Minh worked in the bakery. Upstairs, past the portrait of Nathaniel Hawthorne, find the huge mirror in which Charles Dickens practiced his live readings.

The Fine Art Museum

Don't miss the Francisco de Zurbaran portrait of St Francis, and the El Greco portrait of Fray Hortensio Felix Paravicino masterpieces, and masculine elegance defined. Find the Daphne Farago Collection, Jewelery by Artists; funny, exquisite, crazy pieces donated by her and made from recycled antique objects, old photographs, Chinese newspapers, glass, wood, old watches, beads and crack vials. Then head for the American art: primitive portraits of early Americans, luminous landscapes inspired by the New World, and early American furniture.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

So nutty you've got to love it; one wealthy woman's shopping trip through Europe, housed in a four-storey Renaissance-style building, its great tiled atrium filled with hothouse flowers. No proper museum signage, dozing guards, empty frames on the walls where paintings have (unsurprisingly) been stolen. Nothing can be moved or changed, according to Ms Gardner's will. Her 1888 portrait by John Singer Sargent is a tribute to the might of the corset and confirms her good sense in being depicted in black for eternity.

The Harvard Museum of Natural History

A must: the Ware collection of glass models of plants, a marvel of craftsmanship made by father and son Leopold and Rudolph Blashka, begun in 1895 in Dresden, and completed in the 1930s. Fragile, life-sized models of a vast variety of flowering plants are still displayed in their original cases.

The rest of the museum is musty and bizarre. See the stuffed extinct species, the cracks showing in the hides of stuffed animals such as the sad eland, and the skeletons of the loris and the quoll. The live squirrels on the rubbish bins outside are much more fun. Move on to the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology if you must. Sissy Spacek would run through here screaming.

The Freedom Trail Foundation

Call them to arrange your own guided historic tour of Boston, with an actor dressed in period costume who'll take you to places of interest. Choose from a range of themes.

Paul Revere's House

The subject of Longfellow's "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" was a local silversmith and revolutionary. His 1680 house is now a museum right by Boston's Little Italy, with its authentic Italian restaurants and bakeries.

WHERE TO SHOP

Bostonians like tree-lined Newbury St, with is boutiques, genteel label stores, and many manicurists. There's more interesting shopping, though, in historic Beacon Hill, and around adjoining Cambridge's Harvard Square. The great American department stores all have branches in Boston; Bloomingdales is a bit out of town. Local version Filene's, with its famous sale-price basement, reopens after renovations next year.

Rosemary McLeod flew with Air New Zealand. She was a guest of The Langham, Boston.

- © Fairfax NZ News