Before I post about our trip, let me say that I am flattered by the supposed power I hold in our blog circle of 10 or so people. Whether I am influential or simply have too much time on my hands, I love hearing about what is going on in everyone’s life. Kudos to Paddy for getting his title image fixed and super looking, Mr. Bakersfield for consistently posting great stuff, Amy’s super dooper Ecuador post, and Andrew’s cool Aquarium post. I still need to reply to everyone, just need a little bit to catch up. Now, on to our tour of New England.
Our first stop in the Northeast was technically the Hartford airport in
Connecticut, but we didn’t stay there. We went on to Boston where we stayed our first three nights. In total I took almost 600 pictures, which makes it really hard to choose the ones I want to post. I should start up a flickr gallery like Andrew, but I’ll post a few on here that I can give some commentary on.
The first place we stayed was the Coolidge Corner Guest House in Brookline, MA (just outside Boston). It’s a Bed and Breakfast that is really old. One of the weirdest things about Boston is that all the houses are so tall. This one was three stories and probably also had a basement. This was the base of operations for our first few days.
We went a lot of places in Boston, but I’ve picked out the most memorable. One stop was Walden Pond where Thoreau went into the woods to live. We walked around this big pond getting bit by mosquitos and found the original site of his house. It’s no longer there, but there are a bunch of rocks that people have left from around the world paying tribute. There were also tons of cool mushrooms that I took pictures of along the trail.
One cool aspect of Boston was all the famous dead people. Below is a picture of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s grave, but we also saw Henry Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott (Little Women), and from a distance Paul Reveere and other Revolutionary War players. I particularly enjoyed Emerson in High School, and while I can’t recall anything specific about him or his essay on Self-Reliance, I’m pretty sure it set me on my path to conservativism.
A cool Revolutionary War site we saw was the Old North Church. This is where the whole "one if by land, two if by sea" thing happened. This was also special to us because it was on an episode of Treasure Hunters, haha. We also saw Paul Reveere’s house, but it wasn’t very exciting from the outside, and we didn’t want to pay to go inside.
A very cool tour we went on in Boston was called a
Duck Tour. A
DUKW (pronounced Duck) is an old WWII vehicle that could go on both land and sea. This particular tour took us all around downtown Boston and then into the Charles River. It was cool hearing about all the history in Boston and riding in vehicles that were used on D-Day. What you can’t see below the water is that there are a bunch of wheels!
Finally on our way from Boston to Cape Cod (the subject of my next post) we stopped in Plymouth to see the Mayflower II and Plymouth Rock. We were all very interested to see what exactly would be at "Plymouth Rock," because when you think about it, was there one specific rock that the original Mayflower landed on? Turns out over a hundred years ago somebody picked a rock and decided it was Plymouth Rock, and there is a small memorial with that rock inside. I have a picture of it, but it’s not very exciting, and it’s really just a random rock. Below is the Mayflower II which was built in England as a replica of the original. And you know who was behind the whole idea?
Someone who shares my surname!
That was Boston in a nutshell. Overall I thought it was a gorgeous area. The old buildings and green landscapes are wonderful. Downtown Boston is sort of insane with streets going every which way, but some of the surrounding cities were quiet and relaxing.
It’s good to be back and blogging. Look for part two (Cape Cod) tomorrow.
