EVERY NIGHT’S A PARTY IN BOSTON
Finds a warm Irish welcome in New England
Her eyes they shine like diamonds, you’d swear she’s the queen of New England. And there, right over my shoulder, they’re still playing the Black Velvet Band.
The singer may be new – not surprising given it’s been 35 years – but the song remains the same. The stage too, the bar – and the Irish welcome.
I’m in The Black Rose, an institution in Boston where the diaspora have been coming for years for introductions and work.
And where tonight I’m able to stand on the other side of the bar, cradling my Guinness and singing along to a set that never tires, never grows old.
And that is the essence of Boston, Massachusetts, which in many ways is more New Ireland than New England. You can’t go a few blocks in Boston without passing an Irish bar or someone from home.
Tonight the Green Army is on the march down to the TD Garden where the home faves, the Celtics basketball team, are closing in on the NBA finals.
I tailgate in the hope of paying at the door, past the Famine Memorial and Faneuil Hall, but this is the hottest ticket in town and the queues are snaking.
So I opt to watch in a sports bar where I channel my inner Bostonian with a bowl of Clam Chowder and Sam Adams beer.
Just as Bostonians have been doing since the days of the Tea Party when liquored up and full of revolt, Sam and his pals decided to chuck some tea crates into the harbour.
Well, when in Boston...
The next day I join the revolution at the Tea Party Museum. It is after all just outside my billet for the night, the kooky boutique Envoy Hotel, who have a bucket of beer waiting in my room with a downtown view and a rooftop bar.
Inevitably I meet a couple from Ireland on the tour.
Actors play the parts of Sam Adams and his followers, and reenact the rally in the meeting room and hurl the crates into the water.
And you will get to to strike a blow too against the taxman, though the conservationists among you needn’t fret - you won’t pollute the waters as the boxes are on a pully.
You’re not off the hook though, the actor patriots remind you to stay schtoom: this is an act of treason, so it might be better to get out of town.
Thankfully I don’t have to saddle
‘‘
You can’t go a few blocks in Boston without passing an Irish bar
James Murty
up like those patriots of old. I have an Amtrak waiting for me at South Station for Providence, Rhode Island.
An hour and a half down the tracks, skirting the fine Gatsby houses and yachts along the shoreline and you’re in the “creative capital” of Providence, Rhode Island.
Rhode Island is the smallest state in the Union, and not an island either (a Dutch navigator named it Roodt Eylandt after the shoreline’s red clay).
So it has to think bigger. In Ivy League university city Providence, that means announcing itself in high artworks on the sides of its postindustrial buildings.
Cross the low historic bridges past another Famine Memorial over Providence River, and Native American Lynsea Montanari envelopes you in her giant arms. The curators of these murals and sculptures, the Avenue Concept, will walk and talk you through Lynsea’s and Princess Red Wing’s shared story, and Afrofuturism, among others.
Eat at Hemenway’s across the river and you will feel that Lynsea is sat there right with you at the table, particularly after your fifth Allagash White Portland beer.
All to wash down your Rhode Island Clam Chowder (it’s a clearer creamless fish, bacon and potato broth) and table-sized Paella.
Sleep it off in the nearby hipster
Marriott hotel, the Aloft Providence Downtown before jumping the train again to connect the dots in Connecticut.
Like Boston with Harvard, and Portland with
Brown, New Haven, Connecticut is another Ivy League city.
The doors of 321-year-old Yale are open to all, to visit – you’ll need $84,525 and best grades, for the full academic year. Unless, of course, you’re a particularly loveable licky English Bulldog, Handsome Dan XIX, Yale’s sporting mascot.
Handsome Dan, nephew of the now-retired XVIII, has his own throne installed in the forecourt on campus on Bulldogs Day, when new students visit.
Yale is well-heeled, yes, and New Haven is at heart an old-fashioned university city with individual bookstores and cafes, but it has an earthy hinterland too.
It’s where a Danish immigrant Louis Lassen is reputed to have invented the hamburger for an on-the-go businessman.
And you can try it for yourself at Louis’ Lunch, garnished ONLY with cheese, tomato and onions. New Haven is also home to the Neapolitan apizza – no, that’s not a mistake.
Apizza (pronounced ah-beetz) is a tomato, cheese and thin crust dish which put New Haven on the culinary map. It brought tourists, and one Frank Sinatra, to Sally’s Apizza.
We visit Sally’s bambini and sample the sweet, light and crunchy crust on our Taste of New Haven tour of old-style apizza restaurants.
The central plush New Haven hotel is hard to leave, and the eclectic New Haveners even harder, and we spend our last morning down among the big yachts at the Shell & Bones
Oyster Bar & Grill.
But I must. I have a two-hour train journey back to Boston and a short hop to the airport and my seamless Aer Lingus flight home.
I check out the water taxis but opt instead for the road runners. The harbour can be a dangerous place to be when Bostonians are around.