A couple weeks ago, I went to visit a great friend in Boston - Janice. She and I go way back and it's a long story, but one that I truly hope will continue for a long time. In any case, this was my first real trip to Boston (with the time to actually go see things) and Janice was a great tour guide. We spent a good deal of time on the Freedom Trail, and I highly recommend this to anyone visiting the city. I am a big fan of the American Revolution History and Boston has no shortage of Revolutionary History.
In order to see it all, it would take weeks, but we saw some awesome stuff in the short amount of time I was there. I guess I didn't end up taking as many pictures as I thought, but we did a lot of other great stuff too - dining at a famous restaurant, hitting a famous pastry shop (I still dream about the German chocolate cake), and hanging out at some really nice bars.
We also hit an event called "Chefs in Shorts" which had a lot of potential. However, once we got there, we realized that whoever organized this thing did a horrible job! We wanted to get a beer and then peruse the chefs tables (local chefs in Boston put out tasting menus and you could float around trying tons of different foods) while staying refreshed. After spending almost an hour in the drink line, we found out that they ran out of not only beer - but white wine as well. Since we were committed at that point (and frankly, pretty pissed...) we took as much as we could carry. That amounted to 4 glasses (each) of some pretty crappy red wine:
Later that night, we met up with some of Janice's friends and had a pretty good time. I tried introducing Janice to a glass of Scotch....but I guess there are always things you disagree on. This will be one of ours!!!
Now on to the history. The first place we saw was the State House. By the way, I won't give a historical dissertation on each of these. If interested, this is a good resource: http://www.thefreedomtrail.org/staging/visitor/visitor.html
We saw the State House and noticed that Boston is a very sports infused city!
The next spot was a bit spooky.....for a couple reasons. First off, it was a very old cemetery. Kind of cool though, we saw the graves of Sam Adams and Paul Revere. As we were walking up, Janice mentioned that the last time she was at the Granary Burial Ground, they were caught in a horrible thunderstorm. They ended up sprinting to a nearby bar and drinking beers while waiting for the storm to pass. About half an hour later....the skies started to get very dark and that pre-storm wind kicked up. We looked at each other with that, "...oh, sh*t" look and hoped that lightning wouldn't strike twice. About 10 minutes after that, we were in the same bar having beers while we waited for the storm to pass! Eerie...but still a lot of fun!
I took this picture because this particular gravestone was...um....a bit...um...strangely shaped? I'll leave out further comments in the interest of decency...
"One, if by land, Two, if by sea!"
Finally, a sobering monument. Any Holocaust memorial is always a somber place to visit and this one was no different. The first picture is of a quotation that I found particularly profound. There were several of these all over the monument. The second picture is one of the towers of the monument. If the glass looks cloudy, it's because there are numbers etched into the glass. Every single number that was tattooed to the concentration camp victims who died in WWII is etched into the glass of this monument. This picture just shows one tower of many.
It was a great trip - lots of fun and I don't think I stopped laughing the whole time. Well, probably at the Holocaust memorial, but other than that it was awesome. Hopefully the first of many!
No comments:
Post a Comment