Monthly Archives: August 2009
America’s Hometown…
Today was our day to tour Plymouth, which calls itself “America’s Hometown”, which I guess is true since it was America’s first town.
After making the 40 mile trip, we first decided to have breakfast at the All American Diner in downtown Plymouth, and it was excellent!
Leaving the diner we drove down and parked along the waterfront.
Plymouth Harbor
The first thing we came upon was the Plymouth Rock monument.
Plymouth Rock Sign
Plymouth Rock Building
Plymouth Rock
It’s amazing to stand over the Rock and imagine almost 400 years ago the Pilgrims landing here.
Next we walked a few blocks away to the where the Mayflower II is docked. Built in England in 1956 from the original plans, it made the voyage to America in 1957 and was given to the Plimouth Plantation group for display here.
Mayflower II
And then of course we had to hit the gift shops. Here’s Jan modeling the latest in holiday attire.
Turkey Hat
Heading home we stopped off at Target for more ‘stuff’ and then made the drive home.
The park we’re staying in is really nice, probably the nicest one we’ve ever stayed in.
Normandy 1
Normandy 2
Normandy 3
And the landscaping and flowers are really something.
Flower 1
Flower 2
Flower 3
Today is our last full day in Massachusetts. Tomorrow we head north to Saint Johnsburg, VT for a few days at Moose River Lodge.
As it stands now we should be in Nova Scotia within the next two weeks. We’ll see.
More tomorrow from Vermont…
Au Bon Pain and no Duck…
Today was our day to do the Boston tourist thing, so we headed out about 9:30 am for the 30 mile drive to Boston. But first, we stopped off at McDonald’s for a Chicken Biscuit for breakfast.
It was very overcast when we got there, in fact the tallest buildings were disappearing into the low-hanging clouds.
We found a parking garage near where we were going to catch the Old Town Trolley tour.
One more city and we’ll have the complete set. We’ve ridden the Old Town Trolley in Key West, St. Augustine, Savannah, and Washington, DC, and now Boston.
All we lack is the one in San Diego, which we’ll do next year when we go thru there again. We were in San Diego in February 2008 and really enjoyed the city. It’s a beautiful place and we look forward to going back..
I had already bought our Trolley tickets online so we just walked the several blocks to the #1 Trolley stop and boarded our ride.
Our 1 hour and 45 min tour took us past just about all of Boston’s famous spots.
Paul Revere’s house
Old North Church – “One if by Land, Two if by Sea”
U.S.S. Constitution – “Old Ironsides”
Bunker Hill Monument
Boston Massacre site
Cheers – TV bar
Fenway Park – Home of the Boston Red Sox
Harvard/MIT/Cambridge
Boston Tea Party site
After completing our tour we got off near the Museum of Science because we wanted to take the Boston Duck Tour, which originated from there.
On the way there we stopped for lunch at Au Bon Pain (The Good Bread), a soup and sandwich place that I had heard of before. The Italian Wedding Soup that I had was delicious!
After lunch, and looking at the map, we decided to take taxi the rest of the way to the Museum. And it was all for naught.
We got there about 2:15 pm, and when I went to get the tickets, I found the first time we could get a duck tour was 4:30 pm. After thinking it over we decided that after the hour and a half tour, we would be trying to leave downtown Boston during going-home traffic, and this is something we didn’t want to do.
So calling it a day, we took a taxi back to the garage. But before we left, we walked across the street to Starbucks for a coffee, and then down the street a ways to hit some gift shops.
Leaving the parking garage, I was surprised to find that it costs $36 to park for less than 5 hours in Boston.
Ouch!
We made the drive home and then sat outside the rig watching Mister roam about.
All in all, a nice day.
