Matt and Lisa's Adventures

26 May 2023

We were up early again, this time for our flight to Boston. We caught the train to the airport very early as we were flying with a budget airline (Frontier) and it all seemed a bit dodgy. As a result we had a lot of time to kill before the flight so we wandered around the airport before settling on Starbucks for breakfast. Lisa made the mistake of ordering a “small” which Americans don’t understand (she should have said “short”) and so instead she received a huge coffee. The flight turned out to be really good and we arrived half an hour early. It was then a wait for the subway and we had issues with the ticket not being accepted by the machine. Some random passenger scanned us through on their card which then made us worried about getting out at the other end but thankfully the gate was just open there. 

Our hotel was old but fine. We found a sandwich style place for lunch and I had a salad which was delicious. We then had a tour of Boston focusing on the Freedom Trail. Our guide was Bob who spoke in a very Boston accent, hated New York (his favourite day of the year is the day the Yankees are eliminated from the MLB playoffs) but was very good at explaining things and telling stories. Highlights:

• Boston has the oldest subway in the US. Originally it only went three hundred meters but people would still queue up to use it such was the novelty. 
• The town hall has a massive dome on it which was originally copper but then replaced with gold. Some people tried to steal the gold but unsurprisingly they were not successful. 
• Massachusetts had lots of famous early US politicians including Daniel Webster, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Adams, John Adams and John Hancock. 
• We saw the statue of Mary Dyer who was a Quaker and hanged for continuing to preach her Quaker beliefs. The Puritans were not fans of that and after they had kicked her out of Boston a few times she kept coming back so she was executed
• We visited the granary burial ground which is one of the oldest in the US with many famous people buried there. It had a couple of thousand headstones but probably 5,000 people actually buried there.
• John Hancock was buried there. His wife was just after his money and gave him a basic grave. Many years later the city replaced this with a much fancier monument 
• Paul Revere’s grave is the most photographed site in Boston. The story of his midnight ride is well known but false. It was made into a poem during the civil war to encourage men to join the union army. 
• There is a large grave with “Franklin” on it. This isn’t Ben Franklin’s resting pace at that is in Philly. Instead this is where his parents are buried. The city of the time just wrote Franklin on it to fool people. 
• Samuel Adams has a brewery named after him but the picture on the beer is of Paul Revere as Samuel wasn’t rich and didn’t have any portraits made of him. 

After the tour we came across a group of African American street performers who were dancing and we got caught up watching them. They were very good but they got to the point of needing volunteers and I was pulled in and along with a group of others. We had to dance to Uptown Funk by Bruno Mars following the moves of one of the performers. Lisa thought it was the greatest thing ever, but sadly she didn’t get great video of it as someone was in front of me – I think this was fortunate! It was surprisingly fun and the performers were very good. They did have a hard push on getting people to donate, but I guess that is how they make their money. 

We then wandered to the aquarium and then onto a Macys. I bought some new jeans and a t-shirt at Lisa’s insistence. As we walked back to the hotel we came across a CVS and bought some breakfast supplies as we were well fed up with paying for breakfasts.  Unfortunately we forgot about plates and spoons, so we had to do a second trip to pick them up. 

We went to Rock Bottom brewery for a beer which was quite nice and then onto Guy Fiere’s restaurant for dinner. Lisa knows him because he has been on TV (she knows everyone on TV). We shared nachos in a trash can and mac & cheese. It was very good but big portions. 

27 May 2023

Lisa was really excited when she realised that Salem was close to Boston and so we set out to explore the witch town. We caught the regional train from north station and it was a pleasant 30 minute trip. We arrived very early for our tour and had a nice wander around town but not much was open. It seems most places in the states don’t open until 10am rather than the 9am we are used to at home. The town was very nice but we didn’t get out timing right (which was a theme for the day) and we ended up hurrying to find a toilet, buy water and make it on time for the start of the tour. 

Our guide was Michael and it was a big group. This was a tour we paid for rather than a free walking tour and I think the company made good money from everyone. Thankfully there was no tipping at the end, or at least we didn’t tip. The tour was called History and Hauntings.

• Ghost story about a young girl who was indentured to a ship’s captain who then decided to marry her but she was in a love with a young man. She tried to marry him on the sly while the captain was away but bad weather forced the captain back, he found out and the two men fought. The girl got in the middle and was hit by a piece of wood the captain was wielding. She died and the captain paid the other man and the pastor to keep quiet. She now haunts the building where she died with many people having seen a young lady in blue. 
• Salem tried to forget about the witch trials and for a while was quite successful. After the show Bewitched in the 60s had a fire on their set they came and filmed on location in New England including Salem. This bought a lot of publicity and there is a statue of Samantha which was quite controversial 
• The film Hocus Pocus is also set and filmed in Salem. Apparently it is quite good but no one likes the sequel. 
• All of this led to Salem eventually embracing the witch history as they realised it could make them money. Today tourism is huge for Salem and half the stores we saw were about witches, wizards or related to the supernatural. In October the town goes crazy with many businesses making 40% of their revenue in one month. The guide had a photo of the Main Street completely packed with people.
• We saw a witch house that used to belong to one of the judges from the witch trials. In the end hundreds of people were accused of being witches. There was no evidence required to accuse and often people cited their dreams which was accepted as spectral evidence – if this was the case now I would be in big trouble as Lisa is often angry with me for things I did in her dreams. Eventually that evidence stopped being accepted when someone accused the governor’s wife of being a witch. Unsurprisingly he decided at that point that this stupidity had gone on long enough 
• Twenty people were executed for being witches during the hysteria. One man Giles, refused to plead guilty or not guilty and so was pressed with boulders until he died. It took three days and all he said was “more weight”. Truly a hard man
• At one point Salem was the biggest port in the USA and had the first few millionaires in America. 
• There were lots of nice houses and many which had been occupied for hundreds of years. Lots of the houses had plaques on them explaining who they were built for and the profession of that person. 

Once back in Boston we headed to the Museum of Science. This was very busy with lots of children who sort of ruined things a little. I’m all for children doing science but adults should get to go first! The museum was not as good as similar ones we had been to in Amsterdam or Paris. Highlights:

• Boston dynamics robot that looked like a dog. This was very cool and attracted people into the museum 
• Model of the Perseverance rover that landed on mars. It is huge, much bigger than you would think. 
• Lots of interactive exhibits including some programming ones. I couldn’t work out how to do half of these, which was a little concerning. 
• Some great full size models of space craft including the Mercury capsule, Apollo command module and Apollo moon lander
• Lots of good human body experiments to do 
• Dinosaur models and skeletons. They had a full size T-Rex model as well as skeletons of triceratops. 

We had planned a walk around the Harvard area but we didn’t have enough time. Instead we walked back to a beer garden we had seen in the Boston commons. The beer garden was full but the commons was pumping and full of people which was great to see. There was a photography exhibition on so we spent a few minutes looking at that. We then walked back to the Samuel Adams’ brew house. I had the taster tray with four quite nice beers. We found a nice area for dinner but all the restaurants had very similar menus (Americans need to learn that there is more to food than just hamburgers and sandwiches). We ended up sharing a BBQ platter which was good but a lot of food. The chicken had a spicy sauce on it, so I only had one piece and Lisa had a good laugh at my sweating. 

Lisa was determined to have a Boston cream pie before we left and we finally got this in the hotel restaurant upon on our return. It was ok but nothing to rave about. 

Thoughts on Boston: 

• Much nicer than Philly with a lot more green space and felt like a liveable city
• The subway is pretty old and crap. Bob said that was because for a long time it was run by a corrupt guy who gave his mates and gangsters non existent jobs so all the money went to them rather than being spent on the system. 
• Has two main train stations North and South. They’re only a couple of kilometers apart, would have made more sense to just have one. 
• Lobster and clams tends to be the local food which sadly were just not into
• Quite an expensive place to live from everything that we saw