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The Freedom Trail

Friday morning, Kate and I got up (the sun comes up ridiculously early in Boston!), walked down to the Porter Square T-stop and headed into Boston proper. We started at Faneuil Hall with a partial tour of the Freedom Trail. I've decided that when I retire, I will live somewhere that I can give tours of something- our guide seemed to really enjoy himself and love Boston. The tour took us through Quincy Market, the Old State House, the Old South Meeting Hall, the site of the oldest public school, and King's Chapel. Being in Boston reminded me what a nerd I am because I was eating up the history. The tour included the first in a long line of cemeteries, at King's Chapel.One significant fact we learned was that when the Queen of England came to Boston in 1997 and spoke from the balcony of the Old State House (where the Declaration of Independence had been first read in Boston in 1776), that the city of Boston repaid Great Britain 3000 pounds, the cost of the tea that was thrown into Boston Harbor at the Boston Tea Party. Kate was enraged.
While I have no desire to ever live in Boston proper, I do appreciate that Boston has maintained much of its original architecture, unlike Atlanta where they just knock everything down in the name of progress.

After the tour, Kate and I headed to Boston Common where we ate lunch by the Frog Pond. On the way, we stopped at cemetery number two at Park Street Church, where we saw Mother Goose's grave as well as Paul Revere's. There was some confusion over Paul's grave. First, we found his wife's grave, Sarah, next to a tombstone indicating that a Paul Revere was buried there. Upon closely examining the birth and death dates, it seemed that Sarah would have been about 4 when this Paul died. Made no sense. Of course, then we kept walking and found Paul Revere Jr's grave, separate from his wife's and father's graves. As we were walking, we heard the noon ringing of the carillon from Park Street Church- three hymns, three verses of each. The Church's One Foundation is the only one I remember.

Labels: travel

posted by CP @ 4:22 PM 0 thoughts