Tuesday, April 19th
I want to start this post by saying that after yesterday and the fact that my kids fight about everything, especially who sleeps where, I was ready to turn around and head home. Fortunately, our day in Boston on Tuesday was a great one. Breakfast was a wonderful buffet in the hotel. Kids eat free there, and boy, was that a mistake for them. You would think the kids had not eaten in weeks. They all ate 2-3 plates of food. It put them all in a great mood, though.
Here's one of the best sights of the day. I was about to yell at Zack to get off someone's bike until I realized it was a rack. Of course, it took a while for the kids to figure out what these were for.
The weather was not really cooperating, but it never got too rainy to keep us off the streets. We took our Duck Tour through the city. That was enjoyable and an easy way to see the sights.
One of the things that we saw along the way was the Bunker Hill Monument. The kids thought that was cool and wanted to climb to the top. It is the last stop along the Freedom Trail, so that helped give the kids some motivation as we were walking the path later in the day. After the Duck Tour, we began the Freedom Trail. We walked through Boston Commons, saw famous gravestones in multiple graveyards, talked about Paul Revere’s midnight ride and the Boston Tea Party.
Taking the trail is fun because you walk through all the different neighborhoods throughout Boston. We got to see Chinatown and little North End with all the Italian shops and bakeries. All the streets and houses are different as you make your way through the city. We really enjoyed the walk. We stumbled across a street performance. There were funny acrobats. They did some tricks that amused the kids and were quite impressive. We also boarded the U.S.S. Constitution, the oldest warship afloat. The kids pretended to shoot a cannon and we got to go down a level. It was pretty interesting.
Eventually, we made it to the Bunker Hill Monument at 4:50. The last entrance to climb the 295 steps to the top was at 4:30. The kids were sorely disappointed. I think it might have been a mistake to try it because we still had to make it to the subway station. I might have had to carry at least one of the kids, and I’m not sure I could have managed that.
Rachel got a good lesson in map reading. Dave gave her the map to try to get us from the Bunker Hill Monument to the subway station. She did a great job. In the end, we had to ask someone for a little more help, but the map had the station on the wrong side of the major road. So, it was definitely not her fault. But, it was a wonderful treat to get to sit down and ride back to our car rather than having to retrace our steps all the way back.
We calculated that the kids walked over 5 miles that day. We were all tired and had not eaten much other than breakfast. But, we had very few complaints and overall everyone was in good spirits. We had reasonable traffic out of Boston and even had a delicious pizza at some random place that we picked to stop. It was the kind of day that I imagined as we were planning this trip. I'm sure we'll have both this kind and the ones that make me want to throw in the towel and go home. I just hope these kinds outnumber the other.
1 comment:
What a great day! Sounds like your trip has already been filled with fun adventures. Hope we enjoy ours as much, although it won't be nearly as interesting without kids along.
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