Even though my 30 Plus Teams Tour of Toronto, aka the 416, ended on February 3rd, the Sports Diva is STILL going to share it with you via pictures.
Toronto is one of my favorite cities right behind Boston, Las Vegas, Washington DC, Baltimore,Montreal and Philadelphia, yes in that order.
Notice that the city that I live in, New York City, is NO WHERE on my list of favorite cities and if I could move away from New York City, I would and move to either Boston, Las Vegas, Washington DC or even Toronto, but that’s a story for another blog post.
These pictures from Toronto include scenes of this beautiful city and especially a place that every hockey fan should visit when you’re doing a 30 Plus Teams Tour of Toronto, the place that calls itself, “The Cathedral of Hockey,” better known as the Hockey Hall of Fame.
My 30 Plus Teams Tour of Washington DC is over and by the time you read this post, the Sports Diva will be thinking about another 30 Plus Teams Tour of somewhere, maybe in my own backyard, Long Island or New Jersey.
From 30July until 2August, I enjoyed visiting my family and seeing some of what the place known as “The District” has to offer, and I haven’t even touched the surface of what’s to see and do in DC, Maryland and Virginia or as it’s now known as “The DMV”.
The Sports Diva had one more day on my 30 Plus Teams Tour of Washington DC.
After going on my embassy walk, I took the metro into the Commonwealth of Virginia.
The plan was to visit the Arlington National Cemetery but you know what they say about plans.
Not surprisingly, there’s a fairly new museum in Arlington not far from the Pentagon and the Pentagon City Fashion Centre, which is where you get off on the blue line Metro, and walk over to 700 Army Navy Drive.
Now as your walking(and walking and walking, this is a metro area of Washington DC in case you’ve forgotten.), on your left you’ll see three silver spires reaching towards the sky.
This is another memorial, the Air Force Memorial.
When you finally get to your destination, you’ll see the sign for the DEA Museum and Visitors Center.
The DEA is the Drug Enforcement Agency here in the United States and this museum, like most museums in the DMV, (that’s District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia.)is free.
Because this isn’t just a museum but the office of the Drug Enforcement Agency, please have identification with you.
You’ll have to show it to enter the building and visit the museum, which is just one floor.
After you go through security and metal detectors just like at the airport, the security guard gives you a button that states you’re visiting the museum.
Everything is on the first floor, and the first exhibit you see is a sombre one called The Faces of Fentanyl.
These are pictures of the people in the United States who have died from Fentanyl overdoses.
The museum focuses mostly on the “war on drugs” not only in the United States but around the world also.
Another exhibit tells you about the difference between cocaine, marijuana and opioids.
As you leave the building, you see the wall with the pictures of the Special Agents and other employees of the DEA who’ve died in the line of duty.
As I walked back to the Metro at Pentagon City Fashion Centre, I stopped by the memorial garden for more victims of the war on drugs- children and tweenagers who died from opioids and prescription drugs.
This museum wasn’t on my bucket list but should have been.
After my visit to Catholic University of America and the National Basilica, it was back to Downtown Washington to have some Thai food at Absolute Thai Restaurant across the street from the Capital One Arena.
My next visit was to one of the Smithsonian museums on the National Mall right across the street from the Washington Monument.
It’s the National Museum of African American History and Culture at 1400 Constitution Avenue NW.
Like most of the museums in the area, this is a free museum, but you do need timed passes to get into the museum.
As this is a popular museum your best bet is to try for same day passes which the museum releases at 8am EST every day .
The museum opens around 10am and closes at 5:30pm.
There are 3 floors in the museum, with the first floor on the lower level having 3 departments so to speak, slavery, reconstruction and the Jim Crow era and the present.
The Sports Diva of course went right to the second floor where the exhibit on sports was.
You can take pictures everywhere in the museum except the Emmett Till exhibits.
If your phone’s battery runs out, you can charge your phone for free inside the museum.
Before I got to the museum, I knew I would be there for a few hours and still that wasn’t enough.
There’s so much to see that you can’t do it all in one day.
It’s a museum that may be, no, is painful for some people to visit given some of the artifacts and information in some of the exhibits.
But it is a history that needs to be taught here in the United States, no matter how painful it is.
A visit to the National African American Museum of History and Culture would do just that-teach us some of the history of the United States no matter how painful it is
As I only had two full days to see the sights of Washington DC, I tried to make the most of it by seeing places that I hadn’t seen before.
Two such places were the second but not so well known Catholic Universities in the city, (Georgetown University is more well known.)The Catholic University of America.
Right across the street from the university is the largest basilica in North America, the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
If you visit, you can take the red line metro and get off at Brookland-CUA, with the CUA standing for Catholic University of America.
As the Sports Diva had time passes for another museum in DC and of course, a girl’s gotta eat, I didn’t spend a lot of time in this neighborhood, which was too bad.
There’s a lot to see as you’ll see in the pictures.
No matter where your 30 Plus Teams tour takes you, one thing is a must.
Do all sorts of research especially if you’re just looking to see if your team is going to be playing in that city.
This was a conversation between one of my Circle of Sisters and I at the beginning of hockey season around Thanksgiving time.
“I just checked the Rangers schedule,” she said
“I’m tired of going to the same cities. I’ve never been to Montreal and they play the Canadiens on March 9th. “
That sounded like a plan to the Sports Diva.
I had been to Montreal many times, but I’d never been to their new arena, Bell Centre or in French, Le Centre Bell, before.
You do know the Sports Diva’s motto right?
No, not staying home is NOT an option, the other favorite motto.
Have a sports team, will travel.
Also, going to a game there was on my bucket list, so why not make that eight and a half or nine hour bus ride from New York City up to Montreal.
Bell Centre is located in Downtown, or in French, Centre-Ville, Montreal.
The actual location of the arena is 1909 Avenue des Canadiens.
You know you’re special when there’s a street named after you, just saying.
As I mentioned in my post on the Best Western Plus-Hotel Europa, the arena is conveniently located around the corner from the hotel we stayed at.
There are other hotels around the arena as well as Windsor Gare, the train station, and the green line Bonaventure station of the Metro.
There’s also many restaurants in and around the area, but we followed the crowd and ate at McDonald’s, but not just any McDonald’s.
This McDonald’s is right across the street from the arena and inside, this being Canada, everything hockey including a big picture of former Montreal Canadiens goaltender, Ken Dryden.
As you walk around the plaza , there’s plaques, statues and retired numbers of former players.
It just shows you how much this team is loved in this city and how much hockey dominates the country.
As for watching the game and the experience in the arena, yes Virginia, this is French Canada.
Pretty much ALL announcements are in French, including commercials on the big scoreboard, penalties, goals and even the starting line up of BOTH teams.
“What is he saying?”, asked my friend
“He’s saying the next game is against New Jersey Devils.”
“No before that”
“Oh he’s giving who scored the goal for Montreal.”
As for the game, the Sports Diva, her friend and many of the fans who either are from New York or are New York fans who came for the game, went home happy, and had sore throats from yelling and screaming at the double overtime game.
The atmosphere in the arena was electric and at times I didn’t know if I was at a concert, a club or a hockey game, maybe all three.
In between periods, there was a deejay playing tunes and of course, people were dancing in their seats and in the aisles.
I call this the “Vegas Golden Knights” effect because the T Mobile Arena in Las Vegas was one of the first arenas to do this, now it seems like every hockey arena is doing this.
Even though we sat way up in section 315, we were able to see everything, no obstructed views or anything, unlike watching a game and spending part of your rent money in Madison Square Garden in New York City.
I enjoyed myself at the game and not just because my team won.
Centre Bell is a beautiful arena and it was nice to cross another thing off my bucket list.
It’s not the type of mall that you shop in, it’s more like the National Mall in Washington DC, except that the Commonwealth Avenue Mall in Boston has statues and not a lot of monuments and memorials.
The Commonwealth Avenue Mall starts in part of the Boston Commons with the statue of President George Washington and ends with the Boston Women’s Memorial near the Fenway neighborhood of Boston.
Many people confuse the statue of George Washington on his horse with the statue of Paul Revere, in the North End neighborhood, of Boston.
The Boston Women’s Memorial, which is at the end of the Commonwealth Mall, features statues of three prominent women in Boston and United States history,former First Lady Abigail Adams, suffragette Lucy Stone, and Revolutionary War abolitionist, Phyllis Wheatley.
As you walk through the mall, you’ll see statues of Alexander Hamilton, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, Irish Freedom fighter Patrick Andrew Collins, as well as the Fireman’s Memorial .
It was a cold day and the walk was long, but worth it. So much history is on this mall, again not just Boston history but United States history as well.
It’s one of the newest statues on the Boston Commons, one of the oldest parks in the United States.
It’s also one of the most misunderstood statues in the park.
It’s called “The Embrace” and when one first sees it, you’re left scratching your head because you have NO CLUE what the artist’s intention was for this sculpture.
It looks like a man and a woman in an embrace for some reason, but if you look at it from another angle, (and you have a dirty mind), it looks like something else is going on.
There’s a backstory to this and it’s a Boston story actually.
The couple embracing are Doctor Martin Luther King and his wife, Coretta Scott King.
While Doctor King was attending the divinity school at Boston University, he found out the he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Therefore, the embrace from two people very happy and truly in love.
If you happen to make a 30 Plus Teams Tour of Boston, visit this sculpture and judge for yourself what it’s all about.
You would think after being on the go since I got here on 24th January, the Sports Diva would be taking it easy and relaxing.
Nope, not really.
I had breakfast and took myself out to the city known as, “The city of Presidents” Quincy, Massachusetts.
Quincy isn’t that far from Boston, a few stops on the Red Line from South Station.
Don’t get it confused. There are two trains on the Red Line, Ashmont takes you as far as my old neighborhood, Dorchester, it’s the last stop.
The Red Line train which ends in the city of Braintree is the train you need if you want to go to Quincy.
For all of the historical sights , you can get off at either Quincy Center or the next stop, the Quincy Adams Station.
Íf you happen to take the train going to Ashmont by mistake, get off at JFK – UMASS station and change to the Braintree train.
Also if you wanted to visit the JFK Library, and I would advise you to if you’re doing a 30 Plus Teams Tour of Boston, you can take either the Ashmont or Braintree train and get off at JFK -UMASS, there’s a shuttle bus that will take you there or to University of Massachusetts Boston.
Let’s get back to The City of Presidents, Quincy, which not only is the home of two former presidents, John Adams and his son, John Quincy, it’s also the home of John Hancock, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
When you get off the train at Quincy Center, the first place you will see is the “new” City Hall, right next door to the Quincy Town Hall, the “old City Hall.”
What I was looking for, though, is what many tourists who come to Quincy look for, the Hancock Adams Commons, which not only has the statues of John Hancock, and former President John Adams, but also one of the most famous First Ladies in United States history, Abigail Adams, who famously wrote to her husband when he was a member of the Continental Congress, to “remember the ladies”.
Among the things to see is the Hancock Cemetery, which contains the gravesites of many members of the Hancock family as well as many prominent members of the Quincy family for whom the city was named.
Also around the corner is the church known as the Church of The Presidents.
Its more familiar name is United First Parish Church, and only are both President Adams, John and John Quincy, buried there, but so are their wives, Abigail and Louisa Catherine.
Why a visit to Quincy was never on my bucket list, I don’t know, but at least now I can say that I was there.
30 Plus Teams 30 Plus Dreams 
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