The wash of gentle waves on the pebble beach, the tug-tug of a small fishing boat's engine, flags rippling, the occasional summertime rush of the breeze through the trees, a song-bird, ships' rigging rattling against masts, the calls of crows and the one-time shriek of a seagull. That's all I can hear right now. I'm writing from the private patio of my guest-studio right on a quiet corner of the harbor at Marblehead. Boy did I luck out when I searched Yahoo for guest houses! My studio is totally private, with a separate entrance and a small kitchen. There are freshly cooked muffins, and fruit on the table - ripe plums!

Looking out on Marblehead Harbor

Mind, I can speak well also of the place I stayed in Boston. If you're visiting Boston, I strongly recommend you stay at the 463 Beacon Guest House. Wonderful location on Beacon Street near Massachussets Avenue, friendly, knowledgeable staff, quaint rooms, and free local telephone calls.

I slept so well last night and woke up to a gorgeous new day - the fluffy white clouds were back in the blue sky and the humidity had departed to torment some other city. After my protein shake, I set about packing. With each new departure, the task of packing becomes ever more formidable, as I accumulate a coffee mug here and a Hungarian bus model there. It took me two hours this morning, but finally I extracated myself and my Samsonite entourage from the hotel.

I made it only as far as the laundromat across Public Alley 431 (a strange Boston innovation, the imaginative naming of the tiny lanes between the streets).

Sunday morning laundry

Once every last pair of underpants was clean enough for the whole world to see, I was ready to leave Boston, but not before stopping at Trader Joes in Brookline to stock up on Promax protein bars. The friendly woman who worked there, with her strong Boston accent, just added to the feeling I've had that Boston's the place I'd live if I ever left San Franciso. There's an authenticity - maybe it's a sense of place - that seems lacking in San Francisco. I adore San Francisco, but it belongs more to the World than to it's citizens.

I guess I hadn't realized how close Marblehead was to Boston, eventhough one of the main characters in the book I'm reading right now makes the journey in an evening by horse and carriage. I'm sure their journey two hundred years ago was a lot more picturesque than it is today, where, until you've gotten lost, like I did, in the old, red-brick industrial town of Lynn, the drive is strip mall hell. Speaking of getting lost, I spent a frantic five minutes trying to find my new sunglasses while driving out of Boston before I located them on my forhead.

Scenic drive up the coast

After I'd settled into my guest room in picture-perfect Marblehead, and acclimatized to the beauty of the location, Dana arrived to take me on a great tour of the history and old homes of Marblehead and Salem. Dana, and his lover David, are two guys that I was put in touch with through Imlu, and the reason I contacted them is that they're both from old families in this area and know an awful lot of the naval history of the area. Salem was an important port in the early nineteenth century and both it and Marblehead were home to many of the early American navy officers.