After 16 hours in the
car on Thursday, a four hour drive to Boston seemed like 30 minutes. The drive
was absolutely gorgeous, a green landscape I just wasn’t expecting - I’m not
sure what I was expecting, but the drive was nice. Although I did have to pay 7
dollars just to enter the city of Boston, it was totally worth it.
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| The drive into Boston |
First Stop: Miguel!
That’s right, somehow
they let a guy posing to be my father into the country - I don’t know how they
believed him because he speaks a weird version of English - some British-Spanishy
accented version- and he’s way too young to be my dad. But they did.
I found the corner he
was standing on with no problems - he was waving his arms frantically and
jumping up and down, as if he knew me or something- and magically a parking
space became available on the same street, so I guess I had to stop- what if he
jumped up and down all day? That would have been terrible, I would have felt
bad.
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| Miguel and I after a great lunch |
Needless to say, it
was great seeing Miguel on my side of the pond and we had a great time!
Unfortunately though, his lunch time was over and he had to go back to class,
and I was off for my next Boston adventure.
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| Boston Skyline |
Second Stop: Henry!
Finding the beginning
of the Freedom Trail was actually quite difficult, my GPS quit working due to
the giant buildings with beautiful architecture, and for whatever reason I
thought I was looking for a giant monument or something. The trail was
difficult to find, only because I didn’t know what I was looking for. Once I
found the park, I saw the red brick line and finally I realized that it was a
trail through the city marking some of the most important monuments of
historical moments in our history.
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| Picture I took of the Trail Bricks |
Though the park was
small, it still seemed difficult to locate Henry- perhaps it was because he
wasn’t jumping up and down waving his arms frantically. I don’t know that those
actions would have helped much due to all the trees being bright green!
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| Henry by one of the Freedom Trail sign |
We started out on our
adventure on the Trail of Freedom from the Boston Common, also not hard to find
when you figure out that you are looking for a park! First we went up to the
giant state house with the big shiny gold top and the little church. Then we
kept walking.
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| The park where the trail begins |
First there was a
little catholic church with a big pulpit and rentable or purchasable pew boxes.
It was beautiful, but this was a new one for me; I figured important people
would of course have specific seats, but I never thought that people would own
their own seating sections.
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| The pulpit was really pretty |
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| The rent-able pew boxes |
We passed the old state house and a museum with cool stairs that we were going to go in, but decided we would try after we got some food. It had a cool staircase that I almost fell down trying to leave the building.
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| Old City Hall, I loved the architecture in Boston! |
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| The awesome circular staircase that I want in my future home! |
We kept walking for a
few hours, passed some fun places and came to the “cradle of liberty” or
Faneuil Hall. This building was stunning, it just looked important. Maybe the
statue of Samuel Adams out front gave it away.
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| Samuel Adams looking all important in front of the Faneuil Hall |
From the moment you saw the
building you knew something big happened there, and luckily we entered the
grand staircase into the meeting hall where a park ranger was going to give a
random speech about the hall. This particular hall was a meeting ground for the
first talks of equality. It stood for what the trail stands for; I didn’t
realize Boston had so much to do with our nation’s history. Maybe I studied other
cultures for too long, but that is what this road trip is about - rediscovering
America. :D
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| There are statues of 5 of the most important speakers up front! |
After this inspiring
talk, we landed upon Paul Revere’s house. A quant little house with a fire
place, a little dining room, a bedroom where a tour guide painfully explained a
little hand weave - this woman had no idea what she was talking about, I think
she should have just said it was a loom and talked about other things, but she
just tried and tried and tried to figure it out; I almost wanted to step in and
show her how to use one!- and a beautiful garden area with a giant bell. I
still don’t know what the bell was for but it looked similar to the liberty
bell in Philly.
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| Paul Revere's first house, it was two little stories and very cozy |
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| The miniature bell outside his house, I'm sure the card explained what it was, but I don't remember |
We walked past a
statue of Paul Revere and up next to the north church, where there was an
awesome memorial for fallen soldiers from Afghanistan and Irag. It was so
simple, yet so moving. There were just hundreds of dog tags hanging on strings,
and somehow that was more impactful than the poppy’s from the WWI museum in
Kansas City, Mo.
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| Paul Revere statue |
And when I was walking to my car, the man who let me through
the security door saw the pamphlet form the church that I had and asked me if I
liked HIS memorial!! That’s right; the guy that created, takes care of, and put
up the memorial works overnight security at a business building! His name was
Dave and he was very nice and sweet. It was cool to see someone who cared, a
normal person who in his spare time, made this memorial for fallen soldiers.
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| The amazing memorial for fallen soldiers |
We continued walking
and we passed another church, a little Italian district, a monument for an
American Civil War general, a life-size macaroni noodle, Benjamin Franklin’s
grave, and crossed a long bridge that led us to the monument at Bunker Hill.
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| A cute little Italian restaurant |
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| Robert Gould Shaw American Civil War General |
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| You know I had to take a picture of my favorite toxic orange pasta |
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| The graveyards, though sad, absolutely beautiful |
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| And the beautiful bridge we crossed |
Just when we decided that it was worth the climb to the top, even though we’d
been walking for close to three hours now, we saw the sign by the door saying
that the last climb was at 4:30pm - it was 5:30pm. Still we took pictures, and
headed to wherever this long trail would lead us.
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| Another pretty church we passed |
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| A beautiful park along the way to Bunker Hill |
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| Bunker Hill Monument |
The final stop of this
trail led us to a big shipping yard that was also closed for tours, but you
could still walk around and down to the port where the USS Constitution was
docked. First we passed this giant robot wild wild west looking thing. Then
there she was, this big giant, beautiful ship - the USS Constitution. Sometimes
I look at these ships and think - how the hell does that thing float!?!?! This
particular ship was cool because although not made of iron, was called the iron
ship due to its extremely hard wood that was impenetrable during a battle.
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| The ship loader - or whatever it is called. I thought it looked cool |
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| USS Constitution |
Behind this ship,
there was a beautiful view of Boston, and also the end of our Freedom Trail
adventure. The hike back didn’t take as long because we didn’t stop to oogle at
everything and we knew what we were doing. As we hiked back to the Boston
Common, we passed these statues of kids. I only remember that the statue
represented something really sad.
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| Henry took a picture of me in front of the pretty skyline of Boston |
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| The kids statue that I really liked |
After that Henry and I
played pool at this little pub across from the park. It was really nice getting
to see him. He graduated from the Master’s program I am doing this past fall
and moved back to his home town in Western Mass. I was a little heartbroken
because it has been impossible finding a pool buddy like him in Madrid. Of
course Guillaume and David are still there, but we are one man down for our
usual 2v2 game - Francophones vs. Americanos.
Now it’s, nearly-canadian, quarter-canadian, and frenchie - how are we
supposed to make teams with that mix!?!?
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| An end to the Freedom Trail and an amazing adventure with Henry |
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