9-28-2025 Boston, MA Part II

 Trolley rides and harbor cruises are available in the city to give one an overview of the highlights.  We did both adventures.  Boston, as you can expect, is rife with history, dating back to pre-USA days.  The first Puritans to colonize the Boston area did so in 1630.  They came here to escape persecution by their mother country and live where they could enjoy their right to religious liberty.  (Mary Dyer was excluded from that one.)

 

Among the more recent (1700s) historic sites is The Old North Church.  The Sons of Liberty decided on a plan to alert the colonists of the arrival of British troops by raising a lantern into the bell tower:  One (lantern) if by land, two (lanterns) if by sea.  When Paul Revere saw the lanterns, that is when he went on his midnight ride.  “The British are coming!  The British are coming!”  Paul Revere’s home is near the Old North Church.  (Aside:  Paul Revere had 2 wives.  Each one gifted him with 8 kids, then died.  I don’t blame them!)

The Old North Church
and Paul Revere's statue

 

The Old State House is also an historic monument.  The balcony on the front of the hall is where the Declaration of Independence was read aloud to the citizens for the first time by Col. Thomas Crafts.  The tradition continues to this day.

Side view of The Old
State House.  

The Old State House.  The
little white balcony is where
The Declaration of Independence
was read out loud for the
first time in 1776.

 

T

The harbor cruise was so pleasant.  It was warm and sunny and we sailed right under Logan International Airport’s final approach pattern.  How cool was that?!  The tour guide provided many details about the harbor and its history.  Boston as we know it today was originally about 75% under water.  There were 3 foothills locally and the citizens gradually leveled one or two of them and dragged in tons of landfill and created Boston and Boston Harbor as we know it today.  Even the airport is constructed on landfill.

Ah, the sound of
jet engines overhead!

Happily cruisin.'

Rob enjoying the sun and breeze.

 

The USS Constitution sits quietly moored at one of the piers.  Her hull is constructed of 26” thick hard oak.  The Constitution played a major role in the War of 1812. (That’s the one where the British decided to take one more shot at taming those unruly, rural bumpkin colonists and bring them back into the fold.)  During the naval conflict, cannonballs were fired at our ships, including the Constitution.  They fairly bounced off her hull causing one of the British warriors to shout and call her, “Old Ironsides!”  Old Ironsides is still seaworthy but in order to retain this certification, she must sail a minimum of 1 nautical mile/year.  So the tugs pull her out and she sails out to Castle Island on Independence Day.  There she fires off a 21-gun salute, then sails back to her nest at the harbor, facing the opposite direction so that she will be weathered evenly on all sides.  In her military history, she fought in more than 40 naval battles and never lost one.  She is lovingly cared for and doted upon by her babysitters.

Old Ironsides, saving the republic
one war at a time.  She's a
national treasure.

 

In the present, Boston is a hornet’s nest to us country desert rats.  The traffic is insane, even on Sunday.  Impatient people drive in the oncoming lanes, pass other cars and then turn right.  If every parking space is taken up along the curbs, which is the usual case, they simply stop their cars in the moving lanes, park them and start a new row.  It took us an hour each way to drive into Boston from Winthrop (4 miles or so).  The three and four story houses are stacked up tight-pack mile after mile along the narrow streets, one driveway’s width between them.  We were horrified and bewildered by the apparent nonchalance of the crowds of people who seem to think that this insanity is quite normal.  They even seem to enjoy it.  With all its historic beauty and majesty, we are not sorry to depart Boston.  On to Conway, NH.  Smaller, quainter and user-friendly.

How they live.... miles of this.

These are some of the highest end
"homes," in the city.  No, thanks anyway.