Boston baked blog

Let me just say, for Boston being a smaller city than the others we visited, it sure does have terrible traffic. Maybe they're just not good with traffic management. The "Big Dig" surely would attest to that.

After an hour drive to go about 16 miles into Boston proper, we let everyone off to go through another airport-style security to see Old Ironsides, the USS Constitution. Happy 211th birthday! They were doing maintenance or a remodel or something on the top deck so we didn't really get to see what it looked like. You can see that the masts are even off. The cannons were all sitting on shore. So we spent about 10 minutes there and then left.

After giving the students maps, clues for a photo scavenger hunt, and a time to meet us back at the bus, we told them to follow this red line and we'd see them later. The line designates the Freedom Trail, a self-guided historical tour of Boston. The kids were supposed to find things like the Old North Church, the Democrats' donkey, ducks, etc. all over the old part of Boston.

We sponsors took off by boat (after Steve, Janelle, and I walked down the wrong pier first) on the water taxi.

me

John & Anita Watkins

Steve & Janelle Baughman

Look, I've been to Boston in the Fall! This shows you a little more of the buildings along the Charles River. Very historic buildings right next to very modern buildings. I saw a fire boat, a huge Coast Guard ship, and a cruise ship.

I hung out with Steve and Janelle for most of the day. Our first stop was Mike's Pastry for some "breakfast."

They said it's pretty much famous. All I know is that Steve's Boston cream pie was better than our Boston cream puffs. Here's Janelle stealing some pie.

We soon met up with Paul Revere, his horse, and some of our students along the Freedom Trail. You can see the Old North Church in the background behind the statue.




This is an example of one of the scavenger hunt stops. They had to take a picture of their group (of 5) in front of a fire station (5 points). If they wore official fire fighting gear, 25 bonus points. Two more points were awarded for each firefighter in the picture with them. And, if they were on or in a fire truck, 5 more bonus points. Can you pick out our kids???

And for some other things I saw and liked in Boston . . . This dog was just walking around on the sidewalks by itself for a while. It came back with a person later. It wouldn't stop and say hi to me. =(




This is St. Francis of Assisi. Apparently he liked birds. All around this statue were bird houses, a birdbath and feeders.




Steve and Janelle, being veterans of this trip, were willing to let me choose where I wanted to go. Of course, our next stop was Fenway Park, all the way on the other side of Boston. We jumped on the subway and rode across town.

If we hadn't stopped to go to the bathroom at Barnes & Noble, we 1) would have likely gotten to tour Fenway and 2) would have had other problems. We did have a nice time in the ginormous shop across the street, however. I had teased Ryan before the trip that I was going to come back with every Red Sox player's shirt. I could have done it!

You Red Sox aficianados will recognize this as the "monster" side of Fenway. We only walked around three sides. Someday I'll go back and tour the park AND go to a game.

Slightly disoriented after leaving the subway, we finally found Boston Public Garden, made famous by the book, Make Way for Ducklings. You can see the duck island and ramp in the top picture. I wanted to see the famous duck sculpture that was put in the park in 1987.

We found it, but I had to wait for a little girl to stop hugging, petting, and trying to pick up the ducklings to get a picture of them. The mother mallard probably stands almost as high as my waist. This was also on our kids' scavenger hunt. They had to take a picture of themselves sitting on the ducks.

After the park, we followed the trail back toward Quincy Market for lunch. I shopped for souvenirs for a little while before heading back on the water taxi toward our bus. By our meeting time at 5:00p, it was starting to rain a little. We had a great day walking around. I even wore just a t-shirt most of the day. I definitely would like to go back!