Three days in Beantown

Boston was lovely. We jumped on the train Saturday morning and it beelined through Stamford Connecticut, Providence Rhode Island and on to Massacheusetts (there's my spelling test over), where the number plates proclaim 'spirit of America'.





Boston was one long history lesson, with the Institute of Contemporary Art thrown in for good measure. This is where Samuel Adams, John Hanock, Paul Revere and others got the whole American Revolution started ( we even saw their oddly engraved graves). The Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere's Midnight Ride and the 'lobsterbacks' (redcoats) taking on local militia and sparking the War of Independence all became clear after a historical trail we followed around Boston and Charlestown (every tourist in Boston was following the same trail).


Boston is known as the 'Cradle of Liberty' (they really do take their freedoms seriously here.)and we also learnt that Boston is called Beantown because they have celebrated baked beans recipes, featuring molasses. (The tinned baked beans here have lots of sugar and are rather sweet. Unexpected...not altogether gross.) New England is also the home of seafood: oysters and lobster particularly. So you can imagine Justin was in heaven ordering 6 different varitieties of oysters and a famed lobster roll for dinner. It seems sacrilege to me to put a lobster in a hot dog bun, but when in Rome...



This weekend was also the playoffs (finals) for the baseball, and the Boston Red Sox won on Sunday night. So you can imagine the whole city was sporting some piece of Red Sox merchandise and Sunday night in the hotel there was a lot of hoo haaing from the big screen TV in the lobby. We watched the game until midnight, where it was 4-3 and then fell asleep. It's pretty hard to get into even when there's a cliffhanger.

Across the river from Boston is Cambridge, home to Harvard, and we had a Sunday pub lunch there before wandering around the campus. Very atmospheric: lots of leafy trees changing colour in the squares and historic residential buildings, libraries and halls lining the yards. It was getting really cold (people wearing fleece pants) so we hustled through. I didn't realise Harvard was founded in the 1600s and named after its principal patron who donated money and his library to get it going.

And there endeth the history lesson.