THE FREEDOM TRAIL

We arrived in Boston on Friday afternoon, and made plans to find the MBTA (no longer the MTA of Kingston Trio fame.....I guess that dates me!) and start exploring the city. Saturday morning we headed down the road about 5 miles, parked in the parking ramp, and found the red line train and were at Boston Commons in no time at all. From there we went on the Freedom Trail, a three mile walk that passes by sixteen historical sites in the city. It's quite easy to follow the trail, as there is a line on/in the sidewalk that takes you the whole way.

One of my favorite stops was at the Old North Church where Paul Revere began his famous midnight ride. It was fun to see the windows where the "one if by land and two if by sea" lanterns were hung.

The church is quite beautiful, with white enclosed boxes for each family to sit in. The reason for the enclosed boxes? It was impossible to heat a big building like a church, so the boxes provided some blockage of the drafts, and it was possible for the people to bring in a heated brick or stones to set in the enclosed booth to give off a little heat to make themselves a bit more comfortable.

This is taken from a bad angle so it's hard to read, but it is the tombstone on Paul Revere's grave. The burial grounds contained many graves of well known patriots, John Hancock and Samuel Adams among them.

This is the Bunker Hill Memorial on top of Breed's Hill, with a statue of Col. Prescott in front of it.

From here we walked down to the piers and found the small passenger ferry that takes you across the harbor for $1.75. That saved us from walking about 2 miles, and from the long wharf where we unloaded we were not too far from the Commons where we would again catch the red line back to our parked car. And unlike Charlie, although our tickets were called "Charlie Tickets," we were able to return and are not "riding forever 'neath the streets of Boston."