Freedom Trail

We chose Boston for a family vacation destination this summer because of our study this past year on the American Revolution. 

However, I had no illusions of dragging four kids through the entire 2 and 1/2 mile freedom trail on a hot and humid summer day.  We are actually going to spend the bulk of our week camping on an island in Boston Harbor, but I did want to show the kids a few highlights of history, especially my oldest as he is the history buff of the crew.

So I allocated one day for the portions of the Freedom Trail that they cared the most about.

We started on the north end at the Charlestown shipping base.  It was actually a humorous start because we went to a parking lot to see if that was the parking lot we should use and the attendant graciously told us if we went to garage down the block we could get our ticket validated at the visitors center.  So we thanked him and went to the parking garage. 

As we pulled down the ramp we heard this loud banging noise and didn’t think anything of it until the parking attendant starting waving his hands and telling us to stop.

Then we remembered the roof top carrier on top of the van.

oops…. that was the sound we heard….

Thankfully it was just the warning bar we had bumped and we didn’t knock off or even damage our carrier.  The attendant kindly ran up and held the bar for us so we could back out of the garage.  We made a u turn and returned to the original parking lot, feeling like we had a huge sign on our van that said, “Clueless tourists”  because basically we did… called our rooftop carrier.

Having finally parked, we were ready to lather on the sunscreen and follow that trail.  First stop the  USS Constitution.

 

 

After touring the USS Constitution we saw a sign for a guided tour with a park ranger to the Bunker Hill monument.  This was already our planned next destination, but the tour was meeting in 5 minutes and we hadn’t yet eaten our lunch.  We deliberated about what to do and decided I would run back to the van and grab some food.  This was a good call as we were able to snack on our food during the rangers talk. 

From Bunk Hill, we decided it was time for an early dinner on the North Shore.  This would involve a half mile walk, but everyone was on board when they heard pizza was on the other end of the walk.  More than one person highly recommended we try Regina’s Pizzaria.  It was DELICIOUS! And the perfect dinner spot for our crew. 

Having refueled, we left ready to walk by our last two destinations… Old North Church and Paul Revere’s house.  AND dessert at Mike’s Pastries.

We actually walked right past Paul Revere’s house without noticing it.  In fact we had stopped to take this picture not even realizing that right behind us was Paul Revere’s house.  We quickly backtracked, took a few pics and then went to Mike’s Pastries for dessert.

A few years ago Scott went on a business trip to Boston.  A coworker insisted that he must try the cannoli's from Mike’s Pastries, so they went and even bought one to bring home for me.  However, he didn’t realize that one should either eat them right away or refrigerate them, so even though he brought me a cannoli, I couldn’t eat it.  But, it was the thought that counted.  And he promised to take me to Boston for cannoli’s another time.  Soooo we had to try Mike’s Pastries for dessert.

(ironically enough, I am not really a fan of cannoli’s… but I was glad to finally try one).

Having seen all we set out to see, and eat all we set  to eat, we headed back to the hotel at an actual reasonable time (kind of unheard of for us on vacation) so we rented An American Tail which was the perfect movie to watch after seeing Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty the day before.

All in all, a good vacation day.