Boston

The next two days of the trip were a little rough.  I had always heard of the Freedom Trail in downtown Boston and thought, as much as we love historic things, it would be neat to walk it.  It is a brick line that runs through the sidewalks of Boston connecting historical locations along the way.  Abbey downloaded an app with stories that would start playing once you hit a certain location and the whole thing sounded right up our alley.  Except that we are not city folk.  And we all hate large crowds and noise.  Why those things never gave me pause until we had committed to the day, I’ll never know.  But we had wrestled the traffic, paid the $30 to park, and we had committed.

We parked so tightly (at the direction of the parking attendant) that we all had to climb out the back of the van to get out.  Then weirdly made sandwiches out the back door and stuffed them into a backpack and headed to the start of the trail.  Doom settled over me like a cloud as we started off with Zippy complaining she was hot and her legs hurt and even Abbey commenting that she wasn’t expecting the heat.  We waited in an overstuffed visitor center to use the bathroom at the Boston Commons and already everyone was feeling a bit panicked and claustrophobic.  We made it to a bench to eat lunch while the little girls splashed in the pool/fountain-thingy in the center with about 100 other strangers.  The older ones looked on in disgust at the thought of all the germs and I tried really hard not to think about it while the younger 2 at least had a moment to cool off and hopefully waylay more whining.

And then we were off.  The first few stops we hovered around Abbey’s phone, a cluster of 9 in the midst of hundreds, not to mention traffic, music, construction and any other noise you could think of keeping us from deciphering the story.  It quickly digressed into Abbey and I trying our best to hear some tidbits and then sharing the most interesting points we heard with anyone else who cared. But quite quickly it became obvious that no one did.  Meandering quickly became a hurried walk as we hurried to find quieter locations.  We’d linger in a quiet graveyard just to escape the madness of the sidewalk.  And then grit our teeth and press on with the crowd.  And it was only a Wednesday.  What the heck would the madness have been like on a weekend??  Finally even I couldn’t handle attempting to stay in one spot long enough to hover over a phone I could barely hear to scrounge up some morsel of information about some long dead hero of the Revolution while a thousand people vied for my spot on the sidewalk.  Finally, Abbey gave up on the phone altogether and I began using the National Park websites brief site descriptions to scan quickly, scream out any interesting tidbits over the noise of the crowd to my uninterested and overwhelmed, hot and tired children and then rush onto the next spot.  The red brick path at times would maddeningly take us around a building only to bring us back to the same spot to continue the “trail” which would only bring moans of irritation from everyone, yes, including myself, because we could have at least made the darn thing shorter by walking in a straight line.  It was a bit hellish to be honest.  Not at all like the travel blogs had described in the least.

Halfway through.  HALFWAY.  I, myself was done.  It was only halfway and I wanted desperately to just get out.  Out anywhere but downtown Boston.    Zippy was quickly wilting, Moriah the excited one of the bunch about just about anything (I told you - 10 year olds are where it’s at for trips) was spiraling into the “how much longer, where are we going, can we go home?” phase of questioning.  I kept looking at the bored, uninterested faces of my kids, hot, tired, not having fun, and I just wanted to bail on my own idea.  “What should we do?  Should we just go back?  Should we keep going?” I asked Tim.  He looked at me like I was crazy.  “What? No, we’re ok.  This is fine.  We’ll be fine. Just keep going.”  And so we did.

We stopped at some park to rest our hot feet.  There was a splash pad and I encouraged the younger two to go cool off.  Zippy started taking off her shoes but stopped when Moriah refused.  So I took off my sneakers and took Zippy over to the pad and we splashed around.  The water did feel good.  And soon Moriah and even Elias joined us.   Next thing I know the girls had given up any intention of keeping their clothes dry and have fully abandoned themselves to the spray.  They are soaked, but at least they are enjoying it. 

Too soon, we decide to press on.  Eventually we would have to get ourselves out of this city and back to the campground so moving on was the only thing we could do.  The second half wasn’t so bad.  We walked through the famous Little Italy portion which was interesting and some old section with pubs and such. 

At this point I was kind of hoofing it to get out.  I had little interest in investing much more time in Boston but it would take just as long to walk back to car and creep out of the city as it would to just finish the trail.  My favorite area was Old North Church and the Paul Revere statue.  The old brick courtyard behind the church was quiet (shocking) and shaded with a fountain and trees.  I gave Zippy a penny and told her to make a wish.  We stepped into the oldest candy shop in the US for a minute and walked out with a box of saltwater taffy.   The kids know I have a weakness for saltwater taffy mostly because it is a childhood memory.  Dad loved saltwater taffy and growing up he would treat us at times to a bag of it, commenting on whether or not it was the authentic “good stuff” he grew up eating.  It better be salty is all I can say.  Little things like this make me chuckle a bit bc it reminds me so much of my own childhood trips.  We could never afford to stop at a little restaurant downtown somewhere either, but a box of candy or something like it was always purchased to split between the 6 of us equally, a little something to savor and enjoy and take your mind off the juicy burgers and steaks you were smelling from the fancy restaurants you kept walking by.  $15 and everyone gets 3 pieces!  What abundance!  And heaven help the sibling who tries to sneak a 4th without making sure EVERYONE else gets a 4th as well.  Years later it will come up in family stories “remember that time we were walking through Boston and Dad got us saltwater taffy and _________ ate the last piece!!!?”  For shame.

So yeah, we were revived by the splash pad, the taffy and the quiet courtyard before trekking across the bridge to the last stop, the USS Constitution.  We were all a little more interested in seeing the old ship from the War of 1812 (except for Micah).  But we had no idea that it was still considered a military vessel and required identification to board.  I had left mine in the car. Crud. We ventured into security anyway… and he asked for ID as all of us but Tim stood there with empty hands.  Thankfully he was kind enough to see we were all the same family and allowed us to continue with just Tim’s ID.

And then the knives. Security personnel don’t like knives and we all, always, carry a pocket knife. It comes in wonderfully handy for cutting up apple slices in random places, opening a stubborn package, spreading pb or mayo and splitting up a sandwich.  I never regret carrying one until these moments that unexpectedly happen upon you and you are faced with relinquishing the knife (they never offer to give it back) or returning it to your vehicle (Always too far away).   They said if we tried to hide it somewhere and it was found and used to start a problem we could be fined - this was the option I voted for.  IF someone found it and POSSIBLY started something with it we COULD be fined.  What are the chances?? Slim to none.  However, Tim, always the rule follower, opted to go back to the car with the knives and let us go aboard and drive the van to us and spare the young legs the walk back.  Micah, ever the uninterested, valiantly offered to go instead  and let Tim board but a 17 year old in Boston alone with a 15 passenger van sounded like a terrible plan so he did his sonly duty to his mother, walked around the ship and quickly left with Tim while the rest of us took our time.  Malachi and Elias were also interested in the USS Cassin Young, a decommissioned WW2 battleship that was free to board.  I remembered that my grandfather had been in the Navy and, a native of Boston, had probably shipped out of this very harbor.  I tried to poke around for some kind of info or a serviceman list but was not successful.   Either way it was interesting to think of him as a young 20 year old man in that same place boarding a Navy battleship.  It was a decent end to a somewhat stressful day.  I will never visit Boston again so long as I live.

It POURED again on the way home but thankfully cleared by the time we got home, giving the girls the chance to use the pool that they had been begging to use since day one (hours from home and all they want to do is the same thing we can do at home, sigh.)

I really had to chalk the day up as "type 2 fun". Abbey had shown me a meme before we left about such fun with the comment, "this is what our family fun usually looks like." The video had images of people clinging to the side of a waterfall, hiking and slipping in the snow, trudging through muddy trails. Essentially ideas that begin with the best of intentions but and landing you in a precarious, uncomfortable, possibly miserable situation but lends itself to a lot of really good memories and laughs. Just give it a few years first.   Boston - historical sites, beautiful buildings, cool ships, interesting stories - good idea right?  For a bunch of country bumpkins - Worst. Idea. Ever.

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