World's Fair of Money, Day 4--end of con, start of sight-seeing
By Saturday morning, I was actually a little tired of the convention. I was beginning to be aware of how much the trip was costing me purely in required spending (i.e., meals and incidentals) even without having spent all that much money on the bourse--and since the budget was tight, it was hard to enjoy the bourse without much in the way of financial freedom. That was just...hard. And I still hadn't done half of the sight-seeing I wanted to do. I had several tasks I had to attend to at the show before I felt my time was my own. I had to drop the auction money and accounting with the club president. I had to check in with a couple of dealers, exploring possibilities for business with TEC, and I wanted to visit one particular dealer in antique coins.
It was at the ancient-coin dealer's table that I got caught. I'd already resisted purchasing a beautifully chopped trade dollar, as well as a love token bearing my initials, something I've been looking for for years (and something that is very hard to find--but the dealer was so obviously desperate that I began to feel funny about spending my money there; something felt wrong, so I got away). I'd met this fellow on Thursday afternoon at the hotel Starbucks. He struck up the conversation because he saw my badge, and we got around to the subject of ancients. I'd said that I'd love to collect them but couldn't afford them. He asked me, "Do you have $10?" I did. He gave me his card and booth number and told me to stop by. Smart man. So there I was. He pulled over his "bargain" box and started pawing through it, pulling out coins with values from $10-$50. The coins at $10 weren't very exciting to me. I know enough about condition and quality to be unsatisfied with a nearly undifferentiated ancient hunk of bronze with a nearly-rubbed-off profile on it.
And then I found it: A charcoal-colored bronze coin with a profile of Caius Galerius Valerius Maximianus Caesar on the obverse, and a genius on the reverse. The image was clear, the details crisp down to the hair on his head and in his beard. I developed a complete crush on the coin. It was more than $10, but not outrageously so--and so it was mine. I pet it and loved it and called it Galerius and it is mine and it is my Galerius. ::grin:: It was also my last purchase of the show. I stashed it in my room, and then departed the hotel and the convention for good.
My goal for Saturday was to get back onto the Freedom Trail where Clea and I left off on Thursday, and finish as much of it as my poor feet could stand. That meant starting at the Old State House, and then heading to Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market. When I arrived at Faneuil Hall, I was entranced by the festival feel of the sunny Saturday noontime atmosphere, so I bought a cheap lunch, sat down in the shade, and basked in the Peruvian band music and the people-watching for quite some time.
When I was well and truly sated--and in some respects detoxed from the convention--I got up to poke around the area. I saw an escape artist perform his upside-down straight-jacket routine. I saw a belly-dancing statue. And I found a jammed penny-smashing machine...at which point I realized that with all my bag switching over the last couple of days, I'd left all my pennies and quarters back at the hotel. I could have wept, I was so upset. A phone call to jackwilliambell helped to give me some perspective. And unexpected call from OP helped me focus on some solutions to the dilemma. I ended up only smashing two pennies in all of Boston but, having resigned myself to my mistake, I don't feel bad about it in the end. I'll be back there sometime.
From Quincy Market, I strolled through the New England Holocaust Memorial, which was quite moving, and on to the Haymarket. No hay was on sale, thus thwarting my hay-shopping hopes, but there was plenty of people-watching to enjoy. I crossed the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway (constructed over the Big Dig), and from thence into the North End. I strolled through the Fisherman's Feast street festival (a big Italian street party, one of the eight that punctuate the summer weeks in the North End) and examined the menus at a number of restaurants, all of which were beyond my budget of the moment. My first big stop on this neighborhood was Paul Revere House. I took the tour, learned some fascinating things about our silversmithing patriot (like, for example, that his daughters married into Abraham Lincoln's lineage!), and got to hear a hammer dulcimer concert in the yard. I then sat in North Square, got out my watercolor paints, and sketched a big tree and red-brick building I became entranced with. The sitting was good; the painting was about what you'd expect from an amateur but it was pretty satisfying to me.
My last sight-seeing stop was the Old North Church, which was quite beautiful in its colonial way. I sat in Theodore Roosevelt's box and absorbed the atmosphere.
Dinner was consumed at Caffe Grafitti, where I had a lobster ravioli to die for at a very reasonable price (far more reasonable than just a few blocks away). I sat outside, enjoying the day as things cooled down a bit. Halfway through dinner, a group of people carrying a banner honoring the Madonna del Soccorso (I love the images of her in this article--a Madonna with a club!) appeared on the sidewalk followed by a band that began to play. A friend tells me that such festival bands are paid in beer, and from the sound of it, they'd been paid beforehand. But it was a complete, unexpected delight listening to them play their way past the restaurant and around the corner.
My day ended on Boston Common. I'd signed up to take a ghost-story walking tour. For 90 minutes, I and a group of fellow tourists followed a historian through the Common and around nearby streets as she told ghost stories and ghoulish anecdotes about the early--and latter--days of the city and its restless dead. I'd have enjoyed it more had I not been as desperately footsore as I was. Nevertheless, I did enjoy the stories (of characters like the Boston Strangler, Jolly Jane, Burley Grove, and of the ghosts of the Central Burying Ground and the Omni Parker House Hotel).
That ended my day, and I hightailed it back to my hotel via a cab. I couldn't take another step...and yet I faced one more day of walking on my abused feet.
At this point, I need to defend my kvetching about my feet. I was careful about packing for the trip, brought my walking shoes and good socks with me. And yet, for all this, I still ended up with a couple of really painful blisters. Perhaps it's time for me to buy new walking shoes. ::sigh::
It was at the ancient-coin dealer's table that I got caught. I'd already resisted purchasing a beautifully chopped trade dollar, as well as a love token bearing my initials, something I've been looking for for years (and something that is very hard to find--but the dealer was so obviously desperate that I began to feel funny about spending my money there; something felt wrong, so I got away). I'd met this fellow on Thursday afternoon at the hotel Starbucks. He struck up the conversation because he saw my badge, and we got around to the subject of ancients. I'd said that I'd love to collect them but couldn't afford them. He asked me, "Do you have $10?" I did. He gave me his card and booth number and told me to stop by. Smart man. So there I was. He pulled over his "bargain" box and started pawing through it, pulling out coins with values from $10-$50. The coins at $10 weren't very exciting to me. I know enough about condition and quality to be unsatisfied with a nearly undifferentiated ancient hunk of bronze with a nearly-rubbed-off profile on it.
And then I found it: A charcoal-colored bronze coin with a profile of Caius Galerius Valerius Maximianus Caesar on the obverse, and a genius on the reverse. The image was clear, the details crisp down to the hair on his head and in his beard. I developed a complete crush on the coin. It was more than $10, but not outrageously so--and so it was mine. I pet it and loved it and called it Galerius and it is mine and it is my Galerius. ::grin:: It was also my last purchase of the show. I stashed it in my room, and then departed the hotel and the convention for good.
My goal for Saturday was to get back onto the Freedom Trail where Clea and I left off on Thursday, and finish as much of it as my poor feet could stand. That meant starting at the Old State House, and then heading to Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market. When I arrived at Faneuil Hall, I was entranced by the festival feel of the sunny Saturday noontime atmosphere, so I bought a cheap lunch, sat down in the shade, and basked in the Peruvian band music and the people-watching for quite some time.
When I was well and truly sated--and in some respects detoxed from the convention--I got up to poke around the area. I saw an escape artist perform his upside-down straight-jacket routine. I saw a belly-dancing statue. And I found a jammed penny-smashing machine...at which point I realized that with all my bag switching over the last couple of days, I'd left all my pennies and quarters back at the hotel. I could have wept, I was so upset. A phone call to jackwilliambell helped to give me some perspective. And unexpected call from OP helped me focus on some solutions to the dilemma. I ended up only smashing two pennies in all of Boston but, having resigned myself to my mistake, I don't feel bad about it in the end. I'll be back there sometime.
From Quincy Market, I strolled through the New England Holocaust Memorial, which was quite moving, and on to the Haymarket. No hay was on sale, thus thwarting my hay-shopping hopes, but there was plenty of people-watching to enjoy. I crossed the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway (constructed over the Big Dig), and from thence into the North End. I strolled through the Fisherman's Feast street festival (a big Italian street party, one of the eight that punctuate the summer weeks in the North End) and examined the menus at a number of restaurants, all of which were beyond my budget of the moment. My first big stop on this neighborhood was Paul Revere House. I took the tour, learned some fascinating things about our silversmithing patriot (like, for example, that his daughters married into Abraham Lincoln's lineage!), and got to hear a hammer dulcimer concert in the yard. I then sat in North Square, got out my watercolor paints, and sketched a big tree and red-brick building I became entranced with. The sitting was good; the painting was about what you'd expect from an amateur but it was pretty satisfying to me.
My last sight-seeing stop was the Old North Church, which was quite beautiful in its colonial way. I sat in Theodore Roosevelt's box and absorbed the atmosphere.
Dinner was consumed at Caffe Grafitti, where I had a lobster ravioli to die for at a very reasonable price (far more reasonable than just a few blocks away). I sat outside, enjoying the day as things cooled down a bit. Halfway through dinner, a group of people carrying a banner honoring the Madonna del Soccorso (I love the images of her in this article--a Madonna with a club!) appeared on the sidewalk followed by a band that began to play. A friend tells me that such festival bands are paid in beer, and from the sound of it, they'd been paid beforehand. But it was a complete, unexpected delight listening to them play their way past the restaurant and around the corner.
My day ended on Boston Common. I'd signed up to take a ghost-story walking tour. For 90 minutes, I and a group of fellow tourists followed a historian through the Common and around nearby streets as she told ghost stories and ghoulish anecdotes about the early--and latter--days of the city and its restless dead. I'd have enjoyed it more had I not been as desperately footsore as I was. Nevertheless, I did enjoy the stories (of characters like the Boston Strangler, Jolly Jane, Burley Grove, and of the ghosts of the Central Burying Ground and the Omni Parker House Hotel).
That ended my day, and I hightailed it back to my hotel via a cab. I couldn't take another step...and yet I faced one more day of walking on my abused feet.
At this point, I need to defend my kvetching about my feet. I was careful about packing for the trip, brought my walking shoes and good socks with me. And yet, for all this, I still ended up with a couple of really painful blisters. Perhaps it's time for me to buy new walking shoes. ::sigh::