Ellen & Portia come to Boston

Ellen Degeneres and Porti de Rossi Visit Boston. August 10, 2011.

Today, Ellen Degeneres and her wife, actress Portia de Rossi, visited Boston. First they went on a duck tour (see image below) of the city. Then they ended up at Quincy Market in the heart of the city for a quick photo-op with Boston's Mayor, Tom Menino. Crowds of people had gathered in the historic area, including one family who admitted that they had been waiting since "about 9 am".

Ellen and Portia finally pulled up (in the duck boat!) at about 1:30 pm. Unfortunately the podium mic was poor quality, but Ellen said that Boston was her favorite city and that she hoped everyone would still be able to watch her when she moves to her new 4 pm time slot (she even joked that loyal viewers would need to quit their jobs!). Her speech was sadly brief, but she did apologize for this stating that she had to go and do interviews/tape promos. Oh, and she danced a little.

After she briefly disappeared inside Faneuil Hall the majority of the crowd dispersed. I milled around with a few stragglers, and was glad I did! I happened to be standing right next to the door where Portia and Ellen exited to head back to their convoy. I snapped a brief photo of Portia (see above), but my phone's camera didn't recover quickly enough to get one of Ellen too. Of course, this was the one day when I left my real camera at home.

I spent the next 15 minutes being interviewed by ABC5 News, and explaining to an older member of the paparrazi which photos he had were ones of Portia (seriously, it might be good to know what the people your living depends on look like!).