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.

 

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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.

9-26-2025 Boston, MA

 Boston, MA, you gasp?!  What the Hell…?!  Let me explain.  I have a bucket list, same like many others.  About 40 years ago or more, a McDonnell Douglas friend Hal Beemer recommended that we go to see the fall colors in the east.  They call it, “leaf-peeping.”  I call it, “looking at red leaves.”  All that said, I mentally put it on my bucket list.  Another adventure to check off!  So here we are, decades later, traveling across the country to look at red leaves.

 

But first, there was the airport.  We were easily early for our departure.  Then came the announcement:  Very bad weather in Boston, our departure time is delayed by an hour.  Fair enough.  If the pilot doesn’t want to fly, neither do I!  Then came another announcement.  Very, very bad weather…. Another hour delay.  This went on and on.  Delta began to suggest that if we wanted to change our flight plans, they would reimburse our charges.  Why would we change our flight plans?  If one plane isn't flying into BOS, are any of the others?  And who would fly on it?!  Furthermore, where were our bags?!  So we sat.  Then Mother Nature bought our dinner courtesy of Delta Airlines.  No fair to Delta but PR is what it is.  Obviously, all other planes destined for BOS were delayed as well and so it was mayhem when we finally arrived after a 4 ½ hour delay and a 5 ½ hour flight.  At 1AM, the rental car desks were a sea of tired, crabby people and screaming babies.  At 3:30 AM, we finally lay our heads down at our B & B, a little cross-eyed and whooped.

A typical home in the
neighborhood.  One question:
Who cleans it?!

Our B & B, Chateau sur Mer

 

Nevertheless, time to rise and shine and get on with the show!  Beantown was established in 1630 by the pilgrims;  a bunch of rugged, stubborn individuals ferociously protective of their freedoms.  The Crown still owned and controlled the colony as long as it stayed out of the colonists’ hair.  But in 1773, an armada of 40 tons of tea sailed into the Boston harbor with a $2M tax (in today’s dollars) payable to the Crown attached.  The Sons of Liberty, headed up by a hothead named Sam Adams, said enough is enough.  No taxation without representation!  They stormed down to the shore and threw the whole shiteree into the deep blue in a move that is now known as the Boston Tea Party.  Good Ol’ Sam Adams was good for more than just a good lager!  This event was a pivotal event that led to the dissolution of the colony’s ties to England.  The revolutionary war was imminent.

Three ships like this replica, The
Dartmouth, Eleanor and Beaver,
sailed into this harbor hauling a
total of 40 tons of tea.

Our hero, Sam Adams, at the
entrance to the Tea Party
Museum

Cargo ships like this one
sailed into Boston Harbor
on a regular basis.

 

Religion was a big deal back in the 1600s.  The Puritans were too strict for some women who weren’t allowed to even pray aloud in church.  Mary Dyer had had enough.  She moved away and became a Quaker.  Then, in a brash move, she moved back to Boston.  The Puritan people banished her and she left but came back.  This happened 3 times.  The final time she came back, they warned her that if she didn’t leave, she’d be hanged in the big central park.  She hanged.  This all happened before freedom of religion became fashionable.

Dinner at The Wharf
If you go hungry in Boston,
it's on you!  There are
a million restaurants!

Bronze of Mary Dyer
on the grounds of the
MA capitol bldg, also
called the State House.

Lunch on the cobblestone streets.

 

The New State House in Boston had a big concrete dome.  Paul Revere, a coppersmith, thought it should be copper plated.  After that, it was decided to cover the copper with gold leaf.  But when WWII happened, the gold leaf was painted gray for camouflage.  How they got all that gray paint off of the gold leaf is beyond me but the dome is now back to its gleaming gold beauty.

-To be continued-

There are miles and miles
of tunnels under Boston.

The MA State House