We had planned for a long Saturday doing some tourism near and in Boston. We decided to start the day by a stop at Walden Pond, where
H.D. Thoreau wrote his most known book entitled "Walden". I had never heard of it, but all the Americans with me knew who he was and most had read the book. He seems indeed like a very interesting character and maybe I'll get around to read Walden, who knows. Anyways, the place was a quiet and nice park, with fishermen ice fishing on the frozen lake and a nice trail going around to the site of Thoreau's hut.
After enjoying the weather during our short hike we headed towards downtown Boston to start the "freedom trail" at Boston Common. The trail is a mostly red brick 4km long path that goes around the 16 main historic monuments of the city. They all have a pretty strong significance in the history of the creation of the country and it was very interesting for me as I was barely remembering my superficial American history courses from High school. Compared to Portland where all we can see is less than a century old, here most of the points of interest were 3 or 4 centuries old.
The freedom trail, as if you were there.
The path starts at
Boston Common the oldest Park in Town and favorite protest place and heads to the
Massachusetts state House, the state capitol and seat of government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Just opposite to the state house, we stopped to look at the monument to R. Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts infantry which was the first African American regiment in the union army.
Continuing the trail we stopped at the
Granary Burying Ground where several signers of the declaration of independence are buried. There are quite a few interesting stories around that cemetery but what was the most marking for me was the shape of the tombstones and what was engraved on them. Stylized skull-heads were very common and were making the place quite special.
Our next stop was
King's chapel and we actually spent quite some time going around and reading about its history. It was the first time I was visiting a church that had pews organized this way in "family boxes" (and I had no idea what that word meant before as well).
After going through another adjacent graveyard and passed quickly a few monuments as hunger was starting to strike. We headed to
Faneuil Hall and the
Quincy market for lunch, just passing by the place of the
Boston massacre, the
old south meeting house, and the
old state house.
After lunch we stopped at the Holocaust memorial which was, as expected quite moving. I was surprised to realize how little our companions knew about it so I ended up talking quite a bit to it. I suggest watching
Night and Fog to know more than you'd actually would have wanted... I realized how much importance this took in my history courses in middle school and after and that it is not taught to the same extent here; I guess we feel a lot closer to it as we participated... The monument is made of several aligned glass chimneys all engraved with the numbers that the victims that disappeared were tattooed with. As the weather was cold, there was some smoke going up from the vents at the bottom of the chimneys making it even more if not too explicit.
Not my picture, I was probably too touched and didn't get any good one. 5 Years living in Israel probably made me more sensitive to the subject than I was before.
Union street, and classical Boston brick architecture.
More bricks and the Massachusetts bridge while headed towards north end, the Italian quarter. There we visited the
Paul Revere house. This was probably our longest visit of the day and it was great to see all the details of a house from the independence period. Most of the visit was more about ethnology rather than the patriot hero himself and what he did for the country, but it was nonetheless very interesting. No pictures there, it was forbidden (and I didn't buy their postcards either).
We visited North end old church, sat in the same pew as Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 and then headed for the end of the path to see the
USS Constitution on the docks and climb on Bunker Hill to see the Obelisk. It was starting to be late and the visit of the boat was closed. We could still enjoy the sunset on the docks.
Captain Prescott, near
Bunker Hill's monument. Quite a few fun facts about this one, even though the battle is called bunker hill's battle, it took place on another hill ! Additionally the British won the battle, so it is a monument to a lost battle (it's funny how Waterloo monuments are in England and Austerlitz monuments are in France ;). Anyways even though the British forces won the battle, they were weakened enough after it that it did them more bad than good and eventually led them to their defeat.
After a really long day visiting, we were starting to be quite tired and decided it was time for a stop at Mike's pastry shop. I was not overly impressed by what we tasted but the pistachio macaroons (they're different from our real French macarons though). They were absolutely amazing and we ended up buying a big box and bringing it back to Portland with us. After dusk we decided to have a relaxing evening and spent the rest of our time on top of the Prudential tower in a very nice bar with live music and the kind of view you'd expect from the last floor of the tallest building of an American city with large windows. We were in great company, enjoyed the spectacular scenery, the good music and drinks and called it a night only quite late.
The rest of the picture selection is
here.
