Our Amazing Trip to Boston

Michelle and I just got home from an amazing trip to Boston. We did so many amazing things. Michelle used up some of her time off and I finished finals earlier in the week so it was a perfect time for us to take a vacation. We arrived in Boston at a friend's house on Wednesday night. We are so thankful to our friends that let us stay at their house. On Thursday we met up with Ken and Jenny Matthews who had arrived in Boston earlier in the week and we all walked the entire Freedom Trail. It is a 2.5 mile long 'outdoor museum' consisting of 16 historical sites. The Freedom Trail was fantastic! My favorite part was going on the USS Constitution and going in the chapel where the two lanterns were lit to let Paul Revere know what message he needed to deliver to the colonies in Lexington and Concord (I learned a lot on this trip). After the Freedom Trail we took a short but very much needed nap at the Matthews' hotel room. Then at night Ken and I went to Fenway Park and went to a Red Sox game. We watche them beat the Indians pretty bad. We got lucky and bought tickets last week before it sold out. It worked out well that our wives could hang out while we went to the game because only Ken and I really cared about going to a Red Sox game. Fenay Park was incredible. We got to go down to field level and check things out before the game. The green monster (the left field wall) is so much bigger than it looks like on TV by the way. The Red Sox had a 12 run inning and won the game, so we picked a good game to go to! On Friday, Michelle and I went to the New England Aquarium and the Science Musuem. We were lucky enough to get free tickets to both of these places. We saw lots of penguins and sharks and an electric eel at the impressive aquarium. I even got to eat a bowl of the famous New Enland Clam Chowder from the nearby Legal Sea Foods. The Science Museum was so huge I don't even know where to start! We also went on an official tour of Harvard University. I was very surprised by how small the univeristy and campuse are! It is tiny, there are only 6,000 undergradute students! We got to see the memorial building that looks like something out of Harry Potter (not because it is based off of something from Harry Potter, but because Harvard and Hogwarts are both based off of Oxford University in England). We also went to the Boston Temple. It is a lot bigger and more beautiful than the pictures I looked up show. At night on Friday Michelle and I followed our adventurous side and decided to drive to Rhode Island just for the sake of going to Rhode Island. We had no idea where we were going to go but we wanted to be able to say we had been there. We happened to drive to the state capitol building and walked around the state's legislative building (it looks like a smaller version of the US capitol). On Saturday we went to the JFK presidential library and museum. This was my favorite part of the trip. I am embarrased to say I knew virtually nothing about President Kennedy before this. I also didn't know how cool a presidential library and museum are. We watched some very touching movies about JFK and looked at an amazing museum full of exhibits and artificacts from his life. One of the coolest things though was talking to people who were alive during his career (remember, we are in Massachusetts where he was from) and knew so much about him and loved him so much. I didn't know he was a WWII war hero or that he was a unmarried senator at one point when entering the Senate. We both just learned so much! I can't really put in to words the respect I gained for this president whose career was sadly ended too early. After the JFK museum we went to Quincy, MA where we went on a trolley tour throughout the city which took us to John Adams and John Quincy Adams' birthplaces, houses, mansion, and presidential library. This was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. Their houses and everything are still preserved and are quite remarkable things to see. My favorite was the library of the origianl and authentic 14,000 books that John Adams owned. Keep in mind these books are over 200 years old! On Saturday we also drove to Plymouth, MA. We saw Plymouth Rock where the Pilgrims landed and saw the Mayflower II (a replica of the Mayflower). That's basically all there is to do in Plymouth. On Sunday we visited all the Revolutionary War stuff. We went to Lexington first where the first shots of the Revolutionary War were fired. We went to the actual field where this took place. Later we went to Concord and the North Bridge where the local militias actually organized a strong fight against the British Red Coats and turned them around in their march to squash an uprising. I enjoyed this much more than I thought I would. The Naitonal Parks Services does a great job of teaching you all about this stuff as you go. Let me just say that I learned so much from these places about the Revolutionary War. I can barely even imagine how brave the militia members were that stood up to the British soldiers. They were committing acts of treason and would have been hanged for what they were doing but they knew that America deserved better and would become a free country. It was cool being at the actual bridge where the colonial militias made a stand and pushed the Red Coats back. I have a much deeper appreciation for these things than I did before. Unfortunately, the vacation had to eventually end and we drove home Sunday evening. We took lots of pictures though, I will try to look through them and put some up in the next couple of days.