Whenever I spend time in the Boston Public Library Reading Room, I feel grateful and refreshed.

It's impossible not to concentrate and get some work done once you're in here.

I wrote the majority of a novel here, and spent countless hours reading and studying when we lived in the city. The quiet, hushed energy of the room is the perfect sort of white noise. The domed ceiling both magnifies and muffles, so that there's a whispering hum in the air all about -- despite the fact that a major metropolis is going about it's honking business right on the other side of those walls.

_{(Some of the images below may contain NSFW elements - for extremely intolerant levels of NSFW. But because they're prominently displayed on a public building in a major American city, I'm not going to tag the post as such.)}

In fact, it's a place that's so nice, I almost can't believe that I'm allowed to just walk in and sit down. The restroom partitions are made of solid oak, for crying out loud!

But the sign under the boys is very clear - this library is "FREE TO ALL." (Although a closer look at the artwork reveals it might be especially welcoming to dolphins. Funny I never noticed those before!)

It's been years since I sat in this hall, but today, some business in the city brought me into possession of an all-day Charlie Card metro ticket. As soon as the day's business was concluded, I realized I could go anywhere. So I decided to play tourist around Downtown Crossing, filling the camera with enough images for several #walkwithme adventures. (And actually walking a couple of miles while I was at it, so it doesn't feel like I'm cheating.)

Then I walked to my old favorite writing place, determined to share the first Steemit post from the Boston Public Library.

It's well below freezing today, but I wanted to check out the courtyard before heading upstairs. In warmer weather, this is another nice place to write (even though the same sort of library silence isn't enforced). It's also one of the few place you're allowed to eat. If you pick up lunch from the library's own cafe you can dine out here.

Late last year some friends of mine held their wedding in this courtyard. They won a lottery for this - they only allow a few ceremonies a year. It was a gorgeous ceremony.

From this angle you can see the John Hancock building towering over the rest of the neighborhood.

That statue in the (currently dry) fountain is worth a closer look.

All right, let's go inside and warm up.

The reading room is on the second floor, so we've got to walk up this marble staircase.

It's nothing special, really. Just some marble arches, a couple giant lion statues, and a ton of murals painted in the 19th century.

From the library's website:

Connecting the Entrance Hall with the main staircase is a deep triumphal arch. The marble of the steps is ivory gray Echaillon, mottled with fossil shells; that of the walls is a richly variegated yellow Siena...The great twin lions, couchant, on pedestals at the turn of the stairs are of unpolished Siena marble and are the work of Louis Saint-Gaudens. They are memorials to Massachusetts Civil War infantry regiments, the Second and the Twentieth. The handsome coffered ceiling is of plaster.

And from the same source, regarding those paintings:

The second floor corridor is known as the Puvis de Chavannes Gallery after the French artist whose mural paintings decorate the corridor and the upper portion of the Main Stair Hall.

Once you're at the top you can see down through the windows into the courtyard:

Once you're here, there's really nothing to do beyond grabbing a chair and getting to work.

The lighting is grand - not too bright for working on a computer, but perfect for writing by hand as well. The Wifi is sufficient if a little pokey- it served me well enough today. And it's shared with a lot of people. I can count about 100 folks in here with me - 28 tables with an average of four at each - but it doesn't feel crowded at all.

There's electrical outlets beneath the tables if you need to plug in, and I even found an Ethernet jack down there - so next time I come I'll be sure to throw a spare networking cable in the bag, in cast the wifi gets too congested. (Or I could just go offline for a few minutes. It's not like that would kill me.)

Occasionally a group of tourists will step through the archways, grin and whisper and snap a couple of pictures. That's when I really feel like I'm doing something important. I'm part of a shared experience, and they're the ones on the outside, looking in.

You can expect more pictures from Boston.

I've done a lot of walking and taken a lot of pictures here, today - too much for a single post.

And there's a good chance I'll have reason to come back soon.

Do you like to write at the public library? Do you prefer noisier cafes and bookshops, or do you need to be in your own office to work?

When you travel, do you seek out new places to write?

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                                             -- Winston, Boston, 2018