Pilgrims and lobster and Kennedy

I thought I’d have time to post every night about our activities of the day. But this is no relaxing vacation and we do not usually get in until wee hours of the night. Wee enough to prevent me from posting regularly because I have added the pressure onto myself to post pictures. And then I have to get my phone out, and hook it up, and figure out iPhoto, and get the regular camera out, and refigure out iPhoto, and then figure out how I can get the photos from my computer to the post on the internet. I really should have it figured out by now, but as of yet, it weighs on me every night and therefore I put off posting like it’s a burden.

BAH! You will get no pictures tonight. You may not even get a coherent sentence.

Here’s what we’ve done the last couple of days:

• we toured the Samuel Adams brewery in Boston. We tasted three different kinds of malted barley. Tastes like cereal for a reason. Then we were provided with 7oz glasses and three different Sam Adams brews to taste.
• we took another walking tour of Boston. Same tour guide, different part of town. This time we went up into the northern part of Boston to see Old North Church and talk a lot about Paul Revere. And Increase and Cotton Mather (think Salem Witch Trials). This is also the Italian section of Boston so our senses were bombarded with wonderful smells and promises of authentic, Italian family style food. I mentioned last time that our tour guide was awesome. He was this time as well. Great entertainment and great stories. What I forgot to mention is that he’s almost rabid when it comes to people outside of the tour group taking his picture. He gets down right mean! He started off his tours by letting us know that everything he says is copyrighted material and therefore could we please only take still photos and if we must video then please make it less than 20 seconds per segment. All righty. And that’s being nice. When people on the street would hear him talk they would naturally be drawn to him. His voice carries, he’s dressed funnily, and he’s giving the history of the surrounding areas. The unsuspecting passers-by would gather around to hear. If he caught someone listening in he would let them know they were welcome to stay, but that this is a paid tour, and they would need to either settle up with him now or at the end of the tour. Every single person he said that to walked away and then he would make fun of them for not wanting to pay as they were walking away. And God forbid them trying to take a picture. He would hold his hat towards the camera so the tourist couldn’t get a picture of him. Most people didn’t persist, but some did and he got louder and louder asking them to please stop taking pictures. I was kind of wanting someone to challenge him to see how far he would actually go to get them to not take pictures. It was funny and scary at the same time. Because I was on his side.
• we watched GA Tech whoop up on VA Tech at a dear friend’s house. She and her family are living in this area so we got together Saturday evening some good food and football. Our girls loved her, of course, and have been asking to go over to Miss Diamme’s house ever since. Well, Reagan pronounces her name correctly, but the way Ashlyn says it is pretty cute.
• we drove down to Plymouth and toured the Plimoth Plantation. We were one of several idiotic families that braved an odd nor’easter and the freezing, driving wind and rain that it brought. We were rewarded richly though as we were the only family to visit each Wampanoag house and got one on one attention to ask as many questions we wanted of the native people. Same at the English settlement. We even got to sit a spell with William Bradford himself and take part in a Pilgrim-style worship service (where some Arian youth tried to debate the paid actor who was pretending to be a priest). If you are ever up this way it is well worth the trip to Plymouth to experience the Plimoth Plantation.
• Reagan and I braved the nor’easter once more to climb atop Old Burial Hill to find William Bradford’s grave and the site of the first fort of 1621.
• It is well worth the trip to eat at Wood’s Seafood too. Those lobster couldn’t have been any fresher. I guess we could have eaten them live, but they weren’t long from the ocean when we enjoyed them.
• we toured the Kennedy Presidential Library. My favorite part, and I suspect Reagan would say the same as well, was the information on Jacqueline Kennedy. She lived in McLean for a time (that’s in NoVa, near where we live). Actually my favorite part was eating lunch overlooking Boston Harbor and watching the planes approach Logan Airport.
• we then toured the exhibit at the Massachusetts Archives. AMAZING. Do I say that word too much? This does qualify though. We saw the original Massachusetts Bay charters of 1629 and 1691. Do the math! We saw the original Massachusetts Constitution, the oldest continually used constitution in the world (the US Constitution was ratified shortly after this one). We saw the copy of the Declaration of Independence that came from Philadelphia and was read on the balcony of the Old State House on 18 July 1776. There was a great interactive, kid-friendly exhibit leading up to these documents. I love seeing the first-hand documents.
• we dropped the girls off at Dianne’s house and went on a date night. We almost didn’t know what to do. I had won tickets to prescreen the new movie Motherhood though and so we went to Cambridge to watch that (more about that after the movie is released). We then got to discuss it at Starbucks in Harvard Yard.
• Did I mention in a previous post that we also walked around Harvard? And Harvard Square? It was nice being around a college but not having to worry about studying. I did stress a little for all the students milling about when they should have been studying in their dorm rooms. I got over it. I need to watch Good Will Hunting again though now that I might recognize some of the scenery. Or was that all staged?

Are you still reading? Wipe the drool please. In the next couple of days we’ll visit:

• Lexington
• Concord
• Bunker Hill
• USS Constitution
• and drive by a house that many authors lived in or are associated with. Did you know that so many famous American authors are from around here? Alcott, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Emerson. Maybe it will inspire me to get back out those classics that I was trying to read at one point.

Sorry to bore. I wanted to get this down for posterity. Oh, and we’re going to try to get up to Maine as well.