Part three: Boston, Lexington and Concord

The bus ride north to Boston was a welcome chance to rest - I was one of the lucky few who had a seat to myself for that one, so I could spread out and relax - shifting whenever I wanted without having to wake up because I was worried about annoying anyone. So I was relatively well rested when we pulled into Plymouth, MA. Which was nice, because I would have hated to be exhausted for the rest of the day. We stopped for a short walk through of the Mayflower II and a chance to bask in the sunshine.

It's a beautiful little ship, but talk about cramped quarters! 130+ people on board - not counting the livestock and cargo! Just down the road was Plymouth Rock, so we ambled over to take a look at that too. Sure, it's just a rock - but its cool to say I've been there and seen that.

The town of Plymouth was charming too - at least the parts of it that we saw. Perhaps I should look for work there too :)
It reminded me of Gig Harbor, a town near where I grew up, on the waterfront and chock full of character.

From there we went to the Pilgrim Plantation - a recreated village showing what things likely would have been like. Really quite fascinating - if you are into that kind of thing :)

Then, onto Boston, and dinner at the shops around Faneuil Hall. I couldn't pass up the chance to have some authentic Boston Clam Chowder in a bread bowl... and it was oh so heavenly. Yum! The hall also makes me laugh, because right up on top is a grasshopper weather vane. I saw a lot of things on top of buildings back east, but that was probably the most amusing.
We picked up our tour guide after dinner, and were able to walk a portion of the Freedom trail in the older section of the city, and rode the bus past many of the other sites, a statue of Paul Revere, his house, the Old North Church, the sites of the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party, and some of the old cemeteries. We also learned some pretty cool things, like how Paul Revere is shown in statues to be a pretty good looking guy, but if we saw him now, we might take him for Jack Black's doppelganger. We also learned about the Great Molasses Flood. There is a book out about it that I am going to have to get at some point - it is an incredibly bizarre story!

Checking into our hotel that last night was highly amusing - especially when we saw our door.
Turns out they weren't quite finished with everything. Even so, it felt really good to crawl into bed!

Next morning we loaded up and ventured off to Lexington and Concord for our last half-day of exploration. Time was really screwed up for me at this point - it felt like we had been there for a few weeks at least, but at the same time... only a day or two. There was just so much to take in, and not nearly enough time to process it all. I wound up not taking a single picture of either town because I was so busy interpreting everything the tour guide was telling us. (She had the most incredible Boston accent - so much fun to interpret!) But it was amazing to get a taste of Concord and see Louisa May Alcott's house, and walk the trails that Emerson, Hawthorn and Thoreau would have walked (hey, I'm and English major - of course the literary sites got most of my attention while I wasn't working.) Because of all the rain that had been hitting the area, our destination was pretty flooded, up over the foot of the Old North Bridge, but that just added to the adventure for me - something to make it even more memorable.

And that was pretty much it - from there we were off to the airport and heading home.
We were all pretty tired at this point, so no one was going too crazy - made it much easier to keep track of everyone.

It sure felt good to get home late that night, but it was SO cold back in Idaho, when just that morning we had been longing for t-shirts. Good thing spring is slowly progressing - if it had still been midwinter I might have rebelled and 'missed' my flight!