Today we started out at Plimouth, Massachusetts (f.y.i. The pilgrims spell Plymouth with a “I”) We drove into the town, enchanted by the quaint and appealing homes, which all overlook the harbor. We parked and walked to the Mayflower II (a replica of the original Mayflower that traveled over from Europe). The tickets to board the ship were expensive, and seeing that we could walk right up to the side of the ship, we decided to just join the Japanese tourists and take pictures from the side (at least we haven’t stooped so low as to video-tape our family taking pictures of each other—as we saw one tourist do…) From there we headed over to see Plymouth rock—the ever-famous rock every good American student learns about in fifth grade along with the multiplication tables. I have to admit, the view was a bit anti-climactic. There was nothing there but a rock with 1620 carved onto it.
We did however, pay respect to the Native Americans who helped the original Pilgrims settle in the land by stealing an “h” from the plague honoring them (at least that’s what Preston did). The best part of Plymouth was probably when we reminisced about past trips, while watching children roll down a large hill straight into a busy road (not a safe idea), and slid down a rather steep staircase. From there, we purchased our token souvenirs (salt water taffy and a Thanksgiving decoration of a little Indian girl) and headed over to “Plymouth Village.”
Plymouth village is a recreation of—you guessed it—the original Plymouth colony; they also threw in a small Winemapaoug (Native American) village for good (or politically correct) measure. This was an interesting, if somewhat cheesy, recreation and we enjoyed wandering around and inspecting the different cabins. In the Pilgrim section of the village the workers were all role playing as if they were actual Pilgrims, which was an interesting facet of the tour. We spent the last few minutes at Plymouth village admiring a man in the crafts center who made the most amazingly intricate furniture using only seventeenth century tools.
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Too rushed for lunch, we headed straight over to Concord. We arrived there at about 3:00 in the afternoon and went into the Information Center and asked the old man there what was best to do in two hours. He looked aghast at us and claimed that it was impossible to truly appreciate all that Concord had to offer in just two hours. We told him we’d do our best, and with a map, outline, and general idea of where we were headed, turned towards the entertainment of Concord. While the boys went to view the Minute Men museum, my mom and I went to Louisa May Alcott’s house (something that turned out to be a bit of a mistake). While the house and the history was incredibly interesting, our tour guide was not a bit incredibly interesting. It took her twice as long to say half as much as it would any normal person, and with so much to do and so little time to do it, we were rather impatient to make it through the house; it didn’t help that there were some very annoying girls in our group that we were anxious to distance ourselves from.
Any true student of the English language has got to be thrilled by a trip to Concord, as it housed Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Being the avid learners that my family was (although by this point we were grumbling a bit from lack of food) we eagerly headed over to Walden pond to visit the site of inspiration for Thoreau.
We admired the surrounding forests and set off in search of Thoreau’s house. Ironically, after a rather misleading hike we arrived at Thoreau’s “house”—it was really nothing more than six stone pillars marking the foundation of the original house. Needless to say, by this time we were a bit grumpy, being foot sore and incredibly hungry by this point. So we headed back to the car and realized that right in front of our parking spot, right by the street we drove in on, right by the trail we originally hiked on, was a recreation of Thoreau’s house. A bit sheepish to find that we hiked all around the lake in search of a house that didn’t exist, only to find, many mosquito bites later, that the only site to see was right in front of our car the entire time. Fortunately, with our eternal perspective, we were able to laugh at the irony, rather than grumble and complain!
Immediately after our discovery, we set off in search of some food. This search didn’t go much better than the search for Thoreau’s home. On the advice of the old man from the Information Center we sought dinner at the Colonial Inn.
We arrived, a bit confused as to where it was that we should sit, and were told to pick any table. We selected one, but were a bit unhappy with the situation. After dad searched around we decided to move to the more formal dinning room. We sat down and the waitress promptly handed round the menus. A brief glance at the prices left us cringing—the sample menu the old man had handed us was much cheaper and much more extensive. So we decided, right as the waitress was coming to take our drink orders, to more back to the table we came from. This time we settled in to realize that the menus in this location were the exact same as in the other dinning room! From reading the back of the menu we learned that Thoreau’s grandfather originally owned the hotel. It seems Thoreau was out to make things difficult for us! Hours later (it took forever to get our food) we headed out onto the road to find our hotel in Boston. A few wrong turns later and a detour to walk around the Boston temple, we arrived at our hotel ready to hit the sack and start again tomorrow…
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