Yeah, its Boston. See look, there's Harvard.

A week or so ago I saw a small notice on the hokiesports.com website entitled “Hokie Bird needs your help to travel across the USA”. In the notice they mentioned that the university is putting together a poster of photos of Hokie Bird, Virginia Tech’s beloved mascot. They wanted photos of Hokie Bird in front of famous landmarks, and their goal is to put one photo from every state on the poster. This sounded like a perfect adventure for us, so last Sunday we took our stuffed Hokie Bird, a back scratcher, and a camera and headed to Boston.

The request asked that the photos include Hokie Bird only – no people. That was why we brought the backscratcher, as it perfectly fit under our Hokie Bird’s shirt and we could hold him aloft where we needed him placed. As far as famous landmarks, Boston has quite a few, so we were going to bop around the city as much as we could. Our first stop was Fenway Park, of course. While a photo inside the stadium, with the Green Monster and Citgo sign in the background would probably be best, we settled for the stadium’s famous façade on Yawkey Way.

Hokie Bird in front of Fenway Park

While at Fenway we also decided to get Hokie Bird’s photo in front of the famous Ted Williams statue on Ipswich St. Unfortunately the park is doing some construction and they had the statue fenced off. (Construction, or they’re renovating the stadium after the robbery shootout they showed in The Town.) We were still able to get a half of a shot however, over the fence.

Hokie Bird, out of focus in front of The Kid

Our next stop was Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market. This is one of the biggest tourist attractions in Boston, but the early morning light wasn’t doing us many favors in regards to getting Hokie Bird illuminated. We took some photos from a couple different angles, but I’m not sure these will be the best.

Faneuil Hall

Another main attraction at Quincy Market is the Red Auerbach statue, which shows Red seated on a basketball bench, a rolled up piece of paper in one hand and a cigar in the other. Normally it’s almost impossible to get a photo at the statue, but this early on a Sunday no one was around. Hokie Bird got his photo taken in front of his 2nd Boston sports legend of the day.

Sitting with Red

Hokie Bird learns to smoke a cigar

After Quincy Market we crossed over to the North End and up Hanover St. to the Paul Revere Statue and the Old North Church. The church is almost impossible to get a good photo of, as it’s small and surrounded by several other buildings and narrow streets. However, we were able to get it in the background of the Paul Revere Statue and the mall that leads to the Old North Church. I’m not sure these photos came out great, especially with the church’s steeple getting lost in the photo due to the sunlight.

Hokie Bird, Paul Revere, and the Old North Church

While in the mall, Hokie Bird noticed this sign, which I don’t think he took too kindly too.

No free handouts in Boston!

We then started to walk towards the USS Constitution, aka Old Ironsides, to get a picture in front of the oldest floating commissioned naval ship in the world. However, the trip across the Charlestown Bridge was going to be long and cold (the wind was really whipping off the Harbor on Sunday), and we had a feeling we wouldn’t be able to get that close to the ship anyway without paying, so we scrapped that idea. We walked across the North End to TD Garden to round out our mini-tour of Boston sports figures cast in bronze. Last year the Bruins unveiled a statue of Bobby Orr’s famous Stanley Cup winning goal from 1970, and we hadn’t had a chance to stop by and see it yet. It’s a pretty cool statue, considering that they had to get him flying through the air, and they did a great job.

Bobby Orr and a bandwagon Bruins fan

Hokie Bird finishes off his sports legends tour

After that quick stop we walked back into the North End and bought some imported Italian cold cuts and cheeses and some fresh rustic Italian bread. We headed home to make some sandwiches, warm up, and watch football. All in all, not a bad way to spend a cold Sunday morning in Massachusetts. And if any of the photos end up in the commemorative poster, I’ll be sure to pass it along.