Norton travels, USA and beyond: Boston area

Old State House

After driving through Rhode Island (don’t blink or you’ll miss it) and most of Connecticut, we arrived in the small seaport of Mystic. The town has a seaport village and, of course, shops for us tourists. We had to eat at Mystic Pizza, the place where Julia Roberts starred in her first major role in the 1988 movie “Mystic Pizza”. The pizza was excellent. We also went to the Navy’s submarine museum where you can tour the Nautilus, the first nuclear submarine.

On Monday we moved on from there to the outskirts of Boston, near Cape Cod. Since it rained on Tuesday, we didn’t go into Boston but instead drove to New Bedford to visit the Museum of Whaling. New Bedford was the largest whaling port back in the day when that was a major industry and whale oil was a popular fuel. Now most whaling is illegal by international law except for indigenous Eskimo and northwest Indian tribes. The museum was very well done with all sorts of artifacts from that era, including a half-size whaling boat replica.

On Wednesday we went into Boston, braving traffic to rival LA and squishy parking garages. We took the trolley tour to see the city, but the Cambridge part was shut down for the MIT officer’s funeral which brought VP Biden to town. But it was the first day that Boylston Street was reopened, and there were many spontaneous memorials along the race route, along with plenty of Homeland Security vehicles and police. One of the stops was at the Boston Tea Party site, where we went on a recreated ship and dumped tea into the harbor. Many of the historic sites are best seen by walking Freedom Trail, so we went back in on Thursday to do that. It is a 2 ½ mile walk we started at the USS Constitution, or “Old Ironsides”, the oldest Navy ship still commissioned. We toured that, then continued on the bridge across the Charles River to the Old North Church (one if by land, two if by sea) and Paul Revere’s house. His house was built in 1680; he bought it in 1780 and lived there for 30 years. No photos are allowed in it. Some of the other 16 stops on the trail are Faneuil Hall, the Old State House, and Boston Commons. There are also three old churches with adjoining burying grounds where many early patriots are buried. The east coast is full of churches with cemeteries, we see dead people everywhere. But the Boston ones have especially notable people such as Paul Revere and Samuel Adams.

Today we went to Plimouth Plantation (it was originally spelled with an i), a recreated 1627 English colonial village and a Wampanoag native village. We also went into the town of Plymouth to see the famous rock, which is not very big at all. We finished off the day at the Plymouth Wal-Mart, the favorite store of the Pilgrims for centuries. The weather has finally turned sunny and a bit warmer, so we’ll continue a bit farther north next week.