Boston Travel Log – Part Three

Gorgeous weather greeted our fourth day in Boston. It was sunny and warm, with temperatures rising to 80 degrees. With an approaching cool front, severe weather was a possibility. Storms fired by late morning over SE New York and were expected to follow suit across Connecticut and Rhode Island, moving into Massachusetts. I prepared to follow the weather as we pounded the sights of Boston by tracking it on my Blackberry. The new 8800 was a great screen and web browser, and I was able to watch the storms weaken as they moved into the area at late afternoon.

We started the day by finishing the Freedom Trail that we started on Sunday. We picked back up at the Kings Chapel Burying Ground. It is amazing to see a 400 year old cemetery in the middle of a bustling downtown.

Here is a picture of the statue of Benjamin Franklin in front of the Old City Hall…

We saw the Old Corner Bookstore, frequented by Hawthorne, Dickens and Longfellow. Next was the Old South Meeting House, where many important issues have been aired, including the disucssions that led to the Boston Tea Party. Next was the Old State House, the most significant historical building in terms of Colonial government. Outside the State House is the site of the Boston Massacre on a snowy March night in 1770.

On to Faneuil Hall, the oldest shopping center in America. The second floor features an Assembly Room where Sam Adams’ rhetoric helped enrage the colonists.

Next door is Quincy Market, which was restored in 1976. But it was there in Revolutionary times, tempting colonists with delightful smells much as today. The central corridor still features vendors with nearly every kind of food imaginable.

We sought out the Union Oyster House, the oldest continuously operated restaurant in the United States. I got to enjoy some delicious Clam Chowder there, just steps from a bar where Daniel Webster was a frequent customer.

We crossed over The Big Dig, where I-93 was buried in an expensive feat of engineering. Above ground, the Rose Kennedy Greenway is replacing the horrible double decker interstate that isolated the North End from downtown. Did you know that a similar plan is part of Birmingham’s Master Plan for downtown. I-20/59 would be buried in that plan and replaced with park like Boston. This put us in the North End, which I think is a world-class destination in and of itself.

The narrow streets are filled with Italian restaurants and grocery stores. Next stop was Paul Revere’s House. The famous silversmith lived here in the late 1700s.

Before starting on his famous ride to warn that the British were marching out of Boston toward Lexington and Concord, Revere made sure that a lantern was hung in the steeple of the Old North Church. The beautiful steeple was blown down twice by hurricanes, last in 1954.

You can sit in the pew boxes of the beautiful church, which still is in operation today. Notice the high pulpit, traditional to New England churches.

On the way to the church, there is a beautiful plaza with a statue of Revere.

Here is the church from up Hull Street…

At the top of Hull Street is Copp’s Burial Ground, the second oldest cemetery in Boston…

We then descended Hull Street, past the site of the Great Brinks Robbery and the Molasses Flood where a 2,300,000 gallon tank of molasses collapsed on January 15, 1919. A 15 foot high wave of molasses killed 20 people. Myth says that you can still smell molasses on a hot day. We couldn’t.

We trekked across the Charlestown Bridge to see the most famous boat in the U.S. Navy, the U.S.S. Constitution. Did you know that Old Ironsides is an active duty Navy ship?

We headed back to the North End to pick one of those cozy Italian restaurants. We enjoyed a traditional Italian meal in a tiny restaurant called Ristiorante Lucia. The ceiling were painted with beautiful religious frescoes, the music was Sinatra and the food was tremendous. Here is the restaurant…

There are literally over 100 of these in the North End.

Tomorrow is our final day. We will get an Ivy League education…

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