BOSTON: Day 1- The Freedom Trail

I recently experienced my first trip completely by myself. I have taken a trip across the pond without the Hubby when we were engaged, but this was my first time in an airport, navigating a completely new city by myself. I kept wanting Bean to tell me what direction we were, or what I was seeing out the window of the plane. See exhibit A:

I took about 6 pictures of what looked like the city, but I didn't know what any of it was. This was the best shot. After successfully navigating the airport, getting a Charlie card, and figuring out that the T is a bus instead of a subway train at the airport, I made my way to Liz's work to drop off my bags before beginning my solo adventure.

When I got there, this is what I saw:

Liz working really hard! She set me up with a couple of brochures and sent me walking. I decided to do the Freedom Trail this day since Liz had to work and it's kind of a tourist thing to do. It's a 2.5 mile trail that goes through the city and shows you all of the historical places in Boston.

Sometimes it's brick, sometimes a painted red line.

The adventure starts at the Boston Common, which is a really cool park that used to be a pasture. That's all I got out of that. I should mention that I'm not a big history buff, so I was more excited about the well-known stuff (more on that later) than the random but 'very important' historical features. In fact, I'm using my guidebook to write this because I don't remember what any of this stuff is.

The second stop is The State House. This is where they do political stuff.

Here's my perspective of the 3rd stop: Park Street Church. This is where "America" (My Country 'Tis of Thee) was first sung back in 1831.

Next up was the Granary Burial Ground. It's very old. Forgive the abundance of random grave pictures. I spent a little longer here- one reason I like to sightsee by myself. Some people might not have wanted to hang out in a graveyard for more than 10 minutes.
Look! That guy is probably over 300 years old! He knows everything about this graveyard.

The first is Paul Revere's grave. Those Bostonians LOVE him. There's all sorts of stuff about him. Then an overview of the cemetary, and a headstone with quite a few names. They would sometimes bury up to 400 children in one grave because headstones were so expensive.

Notice the random creepy skulls on the top of the headstones. I wonder what they symbolize.

I have no idea what this is. Anyone have any idea? The pictures in my guidebook are not helping. I should mention that the weather was perfect- 80 degrees and not humid. It is strange that lots of places don't have A/C, but I guess it makes sense because it's only warm like this for a small portion of the year. I saw a ton of runners and dogs. I fell in love with the city and wanted to move there until I remembered the horrible winters. I am not a fan of the cold so I would only love it during this time of year. Boston is like NYC, only better. It has all the same stuff, city atmosphere, parks, walking, a subway system; but without the noise and extra people, and smells and stress. But back to the Freedom Trail...

I completely missed the Benjamin Franklin Statue/Boston Latin School (stop 6) and Old Corner Bookstore (stop 7). That's ok, nothing really cool happened at either one. This is the Old South Meeting House, the top view.

I follwed the tour with old Ben Franklin (pictured above) to this site, but wasn't interested enough in this political and spiritual meeting house to pay for the museum inside. The most major thing that happened here is that the colonists decided they didn't want the tax on tea in 1773, which started the Boston Tea Party idea.

On the left is the side view of one of my 3 favorite stops: the Old State House Museum. On the right is the same building, and the balcony is where the Declaration of Independance was read. This was totally awesome. When I took the picture on the right, I was standing directly in the middle of the street, on this spot:

The site of the Boston Massacre! So cool to think about the streets being laid out the same way so many years ago, and they are the same way now. These two were my favorite, but there is one other that I'll tell you about in a couple of days.

After following the red line some more, I passed Faneuil Hall, which was a marketplace and the site of America's first Town Meeting. I wasn't interested enough to take a picture. It's still a pretty cool place today with lots of shops and different restaurants (which I sampled a couple of days later). Then I came upon a section of restaurants that is one of the only remaining sections with the original streets. They are very narrow and apparently a couple of the bars/restaurants are the same.

To the far right is the 'Bell in Hand Tavern'. I wanted to stop and have a beer at my namesake, but I felt strange having a beer alone in the middle of the day. On the far left is an oyster house that supposedly has excellent clam chowder (on my list of things to eat), but I wasn't hungry and didn't want to pay tourist prices. Across the street from these buildings is a monument for the Holocaust and I spent several minutes reading that and holding back tears.

I made it to the next stop- the Paul Revere House at about 5:00, which gave me 30 minutes until they closed, and the same amount of time until Liz got off work, plus it only cost $3.50 to get in. I planned to make it to at least this stop on my first day since it was about 2/3rds of the way through the entire trail. But I didn't have cash, so I had to plan on coming back a different day. I continued on my quest.

Here are 3 shots of my final Freedom Trail stop for Day 1: the Old North Church. Of course there's Paul Revere- we've seen his grave, we've seen his house, and now we've seen a statue of him. This is the church that Robert Newman climbed up and held two lanterns to signal Paul Revere that the British were marching to Lexington/Concord- which started the American Revolution. There's a beautiful garden area covered in trees where the statue is as you walk up to the church, with lots of benches.

Inside the church is gorgeous, and it's interesting because there aren't regular pews. Churchgoers would buy a box where they and their family could sit, and each box is completely enclosed. They would put coal in a little burner inside each one to keep them warm and to keep the draft out. I think Paul Revere's family still has a box at the church. The families could also decorate their box however they wanted- there's one with a red patterned fabric all over it, extra chairs, and the coal heater.

After such a long history lesson, I was hungry and ready to see Liz's house. She and Louis picked me up outside the church and we headed back to her place. I didn't take pictures of the inside, but it was much larger than I thought it would be and her bedroom was super cute. We had dinner at a fun sushi place that they like. We tried a sake martini, and were excited when they brought our sushi out on a big boat.

After such a big feast, we went home and hit the sack early before another big day. Stay tuned!