Saturday 19 August 2023

Charleston USA Jean’s guide for Doris Visits



Charleston USA Jean’s guide for Doris Visits

The port can appear at the bottom of a New England Cruise, or the top of a Caribbean Cruise.

BOSTON - a vibrant cruise port

 Boston Massachusetts has a lot to offer. Cruisers are likely to be dropped off at Quincy Market by the shuttle bus. Everything is nearby. Faneuil Hall, the Freedom Trail museum and lecture centre is through the market in the next building. The wharf is in the other direction. In our video guide.

  • 0:00 Introduction by Jean
  • 0:15 Quincey Market & Faneuil Hall
  • 1:54 Paul Revere House
  • 2:35 Clough House
  • 2:46 Captain Jackson's Historic Chocolate shop
  • 3:37 Edes & Gill Printing Office
  • 5:33 Boston Common
  • 5:40 Massachusetts State House
  • 5:51 Cheers
  • 6:32 Long Wharf
  • 7:50 Boston Tea Party Museum
  • 8:47 Joes


TIPS FOR BOSTON from NANCY on our chat groups

On the Harbor Walk near the Tea Party Museum at the James Hook and Co, you can find the most authentic lobster rolls. It’s a little place on the water with picnic tables outside and to die for lobster rolls or steamed lobsters.
Also try Mike's Pastry in the Italian North End, famous for its cannoli.
Walking through the Boston Common, continue over to the Boston Garden and take a ride on Boston’s iconic Swan Boats, then continue for a stroll up Newbury Street.
 

THE DORIS VISITS FILM CONTINUES

Jean takes you to the visitor's centre in Faneuil Hall run by The National Park Service. She then starts you on the Freedom Trail which is a 2.5-mile-long walk that passes by 16 locations. It is marked out largely with a winding brick line. It was the idea of local journalist William Schofield in 1951, and by 1953, 40,000 people were walking the trail annually. She dives off and finds Cheers then takes you along the Wharf for a very rounded film of Boston. Note, Boston is the subject of our Halloween Podcast (S1E03) because it is famous for its ghosts and ghoulies!

  1. Boston Common
  2. Massachusetts State House
  3. Park Street Church
  4. Granary Burying Ground
  5. King's Chapel and Burying Ground
  6. Benjamin Franklin statue and the former site of Boston Latin School
  7. Old Corner Bookstore
  8. Old South Meeting House
  9. Old State House
  10. Site of the Boston Massacre
  11. Faneuil Hall
  12. Paul Revere House
  13. Old North Church and Clough House.
  14. Copp's Hill Burying Ground
  15. USS Constitution
  16. Bunker Hill Monument

Fred Olsen cruises to BOSTON click here.

The Harborwalk connects over forty parks, a dozen museums, seven beaches and hundreds of restaurants and stores and stretches 43 miles along the Bay of what is officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It is the most populated state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. The variety the walk offers ranges from maritime industrial areas and working port operations to areas for swimming or fishing. You are never going to walk it all, not in a day, certainly not at a cruise stop, but it is interesting to know that it links so much. Mayor Raymond Flynn began this project in 1984 as a commitment to protect public access as the waterfront was redeveloped. Since then, the Harborwalk has emerged piece-by-piece and is nearing completion. Where possible it is a 12-foot pathway with public amenities such as parks, restaurants, stores, cultural institutions and importantly bathrooms. There is also a water transportation infrastructure.

There is a house tucked away by the old church that is on the Heritage trail, it is called Clough House and is a gem that deserves a special mention. It is an old house, built in 1712 by master bricklayer Ebenezer Clough as a home for himself and his wife. Now, inside there are two actors working their socks off all day, one demonstrating the old-fashioned way of making chocolate in Captain Jackson's old Chocolate shop. The other, Howard, is printing on an old double-press printing press as if in the old shop of Edes and Gill. He prints the Declaration of American Independence, which they then sell. Anyone can sign it and it and have it hung on the wall. Entrance to this house is free, which is amazing as most of the sites and places to visit on the coast charge, some quite regally, but here at Clough House they do have things to sell and ask for donations. They suggest three dollars!

Until 1806, the home was lived in by individual families, the first two generations of the Clough family, and then Joseph and Sarah Pierce and their families.  The home was inherited by their daughters and their politically active husbands, including Moses Grant, a participant in the Boston Tea Party.  It was purchased in 1959 by the Old North Foundation for the purpose of showing the past as a working interpretative space. 

Cheers, the new bar is a rebuild of the original bar, The Bull and Finch Pub, that was here in 1981 and inspired the writers to go off and write the sitcom which is now part of popular modern history. The interiors were obviously shot in a studio built in Los Angeles, but this is the exterior that was used over and over again. The show was nearly canned as the first series failed to gain an audience; it ranked nearly last in the ratings. The show ran from 1982 to 1993 and reached number seven on the charts and is listed as one of NBC's best all-time shows. A staff writer on the show who later joined the production team, David Lawrence Angell was on the first plane to hit the World Trade Centre in 2001.

Boston has become a fun young city with much to offer. Inland there is another path, a brick line as Dorothy might follow in the Wizard or Freedom, because it is the Freedom Trail with many stops of interest from the Boston Massacre, to the Tea Party. From the real Cheers bar to the one at Quincy Market, from Museums to lectures and information by Park Rangers, Boston is a city you can walk around. Here is our overview film. The guide to Boston.

Saturday 12 August 2023

Laura Aikman and Dyan Cannon to meet, ahead of the new ITVX series 'ARHIE', from Dyan Cannon's book.


 Dyan Cannon and Laura Aikman have become friends, and plan to meet when Dyan comes to the UK for the release of the TV mini-series ARCHIE, which she Executive Produces for ITVX. The show is based on her book. From Doris Visits https://www.dorisvisits.com/archie/

In her book Dear Carey, Dyan Cannon reveals she wasn't looking for romance when she sat down for lunch with Cary Grant in the studio canteen; she was a young actress on the outskirts of Hollywood just hoping for her big break. Her sweet, sad, candid, but honest autobiography, Dear Cary, reveals a side of Cary Grant the world has never before seen. Executive Producer Cannon was keen that her book was interpreted carefully, and the casting of her as a young actress was right. After many conversations and video callbacks and auditions with every young actress in Hollywood and beyond, Laura Aikman was chosen. When they spoke after Laura had been contracted and were discussing Laura as the star, Dyan was shocked to discover that Laura is from England and the American accent that she had heard for months was not Laura's native voice.

Laura misses cruise on the P&O AZURA to film ARCHIE

The two spoke regularly throughout shooting, screening, and editing. Now friends, the two are to meet when Dyan comes over for the Archie press launch. They will both be flying in, because Laura, who has been filming all year on different shows, has yet to have a holiday. The launch is in the middle of her holiday. Laura also missed a planned cruise she was due to take on the P&O Azura, where her parents were both on board as celebrity guests. Her father Stuart St Paul is the Celebrity Stuntman, movie director, and cruise crime author of Cruise Ship Heist, and her mother, Jean Heard, is an actress who has played in the West End and On Broadway and now presents Doris Visits Cruise TV.

Laura Holly Aikman went to Haberdashers School in Northwest London, which Jason Issacs also attended. (as did Sacha Baron Cohen and Matt Lucas). At Habs she did many stage performances including Henry V speaking only in French. She left school just before A-levels, when the BBC asked her to lead out the Saturday morning Show MYSTI. She has also led out the series Personal Affairs, and played James Cordon's girlfriend in the Christmas special of Gavin and Stacey.

The series concentrates on Dyan's time with Carey from episode 2. The first episode sees the boy, Archibald Alec Leech, born in January 1904 in Bristol, UK, invent and become Cary Grant. What Dyan found in meeting Cary was a star-crossed soul mate - a man who fell instantly in love with her, pursued her relentlessly and eventually persuaded her to love him back equally. Cary Grant and Dyan Cannon were a glamorous and popular celebrity couple, the epicentre of chic and swinging 1960s Hollywood. For a few brief years, their romance flourished; she became his fourth wife, and they had a daughter. Their romance played out like one of Grant's movies - bold, witty, full of dramatic gestures, and equally tender moments. When the love died, however, it ended in the same way it had started: dramatically, on courthouse steps and on the front page of every newspaper in the world. Sweet, sad, candid, and honest, Dear Cary reveals a side of Cary Grant the world has never-before seen. It has taken Dyan Cannon two decades to reconcile herself to the death of Cary Grant and to come to terms with their stormy, difficult love. Dear Cary, is the end result of that acceptance; her final love letter to her one true love, Cary Grant. Archie is a result of Dear Cary, and Laura Aikman portrays that sensitive role. Grant was married five times; to actresses Virginia Cherrill (1934–1935), Barbara Hutton (1942-1945), Betsy Drake (1949–1962), Dyan Cannon (1965–1968), and Barbara Harris (1981-1986).

Her parents, who now have the TV cruise channel Doris Visits as their retirement project on YouTube, will miss the launch of Archie as they are ship jumping as Stuart is on a book tour for the release of his novel Cruise Ship Heist. Stuart says, when Laura started in the film industry people used to say, "Oh, you are Stuart St Paul's daughter." When it got to the point, that when I walked on set they said to me, "Oh, you're Laura Aikman's dad!"  He goes on to say, "As proud as I was, it was time to put my feet up, cruise and write."