Westminster, MA to Moultonborough NH - One Day in Boston! - Day 13

You know how, sometimes, even though something's not really on your way, but it's cool, so you go there anyway?

Hello, Boston!

We drove from our hotel in Westminster to Lowell, MA (where, we learned too late, Jack Kerouac is buried) and took the commuter train into Boston. We focussed our tour on the Freedom Trail (which is conveniently paved right into the streets! - Red and grey bricks down the centre of the sidewalks so you can do a self-guided tour without ever getting lost. Very cool!


We saw Faneuil Hall, which has been a meeting house and marketplace since 1742... and holds a 32'x16' painting that has to stay inside the hall forever now because it won't fit out the doors. It also held a huge (my guess is about 5'x15' "sketch" for a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, that was found behind another painting in the hall.

The old State House

Former 

We saw the site of the "Boston Massacre" - and heard a National Parks Service ranger tell us a really interesting, non-partisan version of events that I thought was really impressive.

Where the merchants were
meeting on the night of
the Tea Party - it wasn't me!

 We followed her tour to the next stop, where she talked about the Boston Tea Party... again focussing on the "history is written by the winners" aspects of the story. For example, the Tea Act: Yes, it imposed a tax on British East India Tea. And it gave the British East India Tea Company a monopoly on tea sales in America. However, it also guaranteed a cap on tea prices that, even including the tax, would have given the American colonies the least expensive tea in the world. But John Hancock and Samuel Adams were merchants, and the idea of tampering with their new "market economy" was pretty threatening, and they were having none of it.

We saw the gravesites of Ben Franklin's parents, Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, and John Hancock at the Granary Burying Ground (which looked like every spooky cemetery you see at Hallowe'en) - almost all of Boston's burying grounds were always civic land and not affiliated with any particular church. This one is the third oldest in Boston and was established in 1660ish.

Of course, we had to visit Pinckney Street, which is in the swanky Beacon Hill area (took pictures at the corner of Pinckney and Joy!

There were memorials to the fallen in pretty much every war I could name, including a massive one to the 54th regiment (one of the first African American regiments fighting in the Civil War - the one the movie "Glory" was about), just outside of the new Massachusetts State House. (The old one was where the massacre took place).


We walked back near Haymarket Square to the Bell in Hand (the oldest active pub in the US - it's moved a few times but has basically been a going concern since 1795. We had some nachos and a drink, and then continued on the last leg of our tour for today.




We just barely arrived at Paul Revere's home in time to look around, and were able to look around the Old North Church,  the church whose steeple held the lanterns for "One if by land, two if by sea."

We could easily have spent a week in Boston (I was particularly disappointed we didn't have time to see Salem - it's close by, but we had a train to catch) so we'll definitely go back one day.

Got back to the car in Lowell without too much fanfare, although making use of the commuter train's wifi system showed us our next problem, which was that practically every hotel room in 3 states was rented out.

Eventually, we found another Rodeway Inn, this one in Moultonborough (I'm glad I didn't have to learn to write that in elementary school!). It's really darling - sort of Alpiney looking - and it has a pool (a good reason to wake up at a reasonable hour)!

It's also in the "New Hampshire Lakes Region." We drove up here after dark, so I'm quite certain that the views will be astonishing tomorrow!