By Shelby
This week started with our next set of challenges. I came down with a terrible cold. I decided to fight through it and not take the day off from work. We ended up working in a very interesting library in Woburn, a suburb of Boston. The library was old and historic with long halls and tall shelves of books, but there was a recent all glass and very modern-looking addition made to it. It was very different from the original style of the library, but somehow it worked.
After work, we went to a local grocery store and came across a funky robot with googly eyes. We couldn’t figure out what it was doing, maybe cleaning or scanning items for restocking. We then went to a nearby park and made a package of microwaveable noodles for dinner. Tuesday went pretty much the same. We worked at the same library and had more packaged noodles for dinner.
On Wednesday, again we worked at the library. After work, we decided to walk around the downtown area of Woburn and find a restaurant to eat at. We chose an Asian restaurant where Spencer tried tofu for the first time. He liked it. He also successfully used chopsticks for the first time. After dinner, we got ice cream at a local, very popular ice cream shop called Nannabette’s.
On Thursday, we went to Minute Man National Historical Park and walked the trail where British regulars walked when they marched from Lexington to Concord to attempt to seize a stockpile of weapons and gunpowder. This is where the “shot heard around the world” happened that sparked the start of the American Revolution.
We saw several important sites such as the place where Paul Revere was captured when he rode to warn everyone that the British regulars were coming. We also saw houses of colonists who lived in the area and graves of British soldiers who died during their march. Multiple times we brought up how crazy it was that the soldiers had traveled such a long distance without stopping.
The next day, we took the metro into Boston to walk the Freedom Trail, which is a 2.5-mile trail through the historic area in Boston marked by red bricks that leads to many important sites and landmarks from the American Revolution. As we walked the trail we saw many tours and school groups also walking the trail, along with many people dressed up in costumes from the colonial time period.
We saw many interesting sites, such as the Granary Burying Ground, which was established in 1660. This is the burial site of Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin’s parents, and victims of the Boston Massacre. We also saw the Park Street Church. Its 217 ft steeple used to be the first thing that people saw when they arrived in Boston. We saw the Old South Church, where the Boston Tea Party was planned, along with the Old State House, which is the site of the Boston Massacre. This is also where the Declaration of Independence was read to the public for the first time in 1776.
Along the freedom trail, we saw Paul Revere’s house and the Old North Church, which is the location of the “one if by land, two if by sea” lantern signal from Paul Revere. That was pretty cool to see. After that, we walked on to see the Bunker Hill Monument on Breed’s Hill. This is where the famous quote, “Don’t fire till you see the whites of their eyes.” supposedly was said. The final site we saw along the Freedom Trail was part of the Boston Harbor, where we saw the USS Constitution, also known as Old Ironsides.
By the time we had finished the Freedom Trail, we were pretty hungry. We decided to have pizza at the original location of Regina Pizzeria, a famous pizzeria in Boston founded in 1926. It was very good. We took the metro back to the car and got on the highway. Unfortunately, it was rush hour. We decided to hang out at a rest stop until traffic got better and the temperature cooled down. It was a very hot day, a big change from the cold weather we had been experiencing! When traffic died down, we got back on the highway and traveled up to Salem, our next stop in Massachusetts. That’s right, we traveled to Salem on Friday the 13th for a weekend with a blood moon lunar eclipse.
We got up early Saturday morning to drive to Gloucester and go on a Cape Ann Whale Watch tour. As the ship went out to sea, a patchy fog rolled in. The ship used its foghorn several times to warn other boats of where we were. We worried that even if there were whales, we wouldn’t be able to see them because of the low visibility.
Luckily, the fog eventually cleared up and we saw a finback whale come to the surface multiple times, causing cheers from all the people on board. It surfaced only for very brief periods before diving back underwater, likely hunting for food. Later on, we were lucky enough to see a humpback whale, which is much smaller than the finback whale. We also saw a few types of sea lions and many seagulls.
After the whale watch tour, we drove to a park in Salem to have lunch. My first impression of Salem is “touristy”. There were witch and Halloween-themed gift shops everywhere, along with signs for ghost tours. It felt like it was Halloween all year round in Salem. We followed the red painted line through the town (Salem Heritage Trail) starting from the Witch Mall. We saw the Old Town Hall, which was in the Hocus Pocus movie, along with a few other film sites.
I also got a picture with the Bewitched statue. Bewitched filmed a few episodes in Salem. We also saw the Salem Witch Trials Memorial and the Witch House, which is the only remaining structure with ties to the witch trials. I learned that Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem. We saw the house he was born in and the House of Seven Gables, which inspired Hawthorne’s book of the same name.
On Sunday we drove north on the scenic byway up through New Hampshire to Wells, Maine, where we will be staying for the next few days. Since I was still recovering from my cold, and Spencer’s seasonal allergies were acting up, we decided to get an Airbnb for the first couple of days in Maine. Despite not feeling the best we had a great time in and around Boston. Check the Massachusetts page for loads more pictures from these adventures.
Fun facts from Week 3:
- Boston Latin School, founded in 1635, is considered the first public school in the US.
- Benjamin Franklin was baptized at the Old South Church in Boston. This church was also used as the meeting place where the Boston Tea Party was planned.
- The Granary Burying Ground in Boston has approximately 2345 gravestones, but there are estimated to be 5000 people buried there. The gravestones were also moved in the mid-1800s from their haphazard locations to be in straight rows, so paved paths could be put in.
- The song “America (My Country ‘Tis of Thee)” was first sung in 1831 at the Park Street Church in Boston.
- The finback whale is the second largest mammal on Earth. It can grow up to around 85 ft long.
One response to “Week 3”
Loving the blog look forward to it each week!