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Looking for things to do while in Boston, we came across an opportunity to make up for the anticlimactic fireworks displays we missed on the Fourth, but it would require a LONG day to do it.
Confusing as it was to the kids, we started the day by parking a fairly long distance from our first target, requiring everyone to walk several long blocks along Boston's harbor just to begin the excursion.
Finally reaching our first stop of the day, we began at the Boston Aquarium, a narrow multi-story building with a unique structure to it. Entering, you are encouraged to walk along exhibits lining the outer walls and showing habitats of East Coast marine life. Once at the top, you descend along the inner "walls" which wrap you around a huge cylindrical tank filled with sharks, sea turtles, and more. Along the way, various talks are scheduled including some on turtle rescue and rehab as well as maraine mammals. As long-time members of the Monterey Aquarium, we were impressed with the quality of this offering, having seen several others over the years. So far, we think this is only second to the Monterey experience.
From here, we walked to the nearby North End, where the famed Old North Church and Paul Rever's house can be found. Now a thriving Italian neighborhood, we saw a parade of saints through the streets and plenty of authentic Italian eateries. Choosing one for lunch after we were harangued inside by a late middle-aged woman, we were treated to seeing her eat lunch at a nearby table while we ate ours, and had the homey and authentic addition of dirty tablecloths and fresh pizza that reminded us lot of the do-it-yourself Chef Boyardee kits we used to get years ago. Attempting to put this experience behind us, we found the Old North Church and sat in pew boxes - an experience none of us had ever had before - to hear the docent regale us with the tales of the church's part immortalized in the Longfellow poem (Oh listen my children and you shall hear, of the midnight ride of Paul Revere....).
Leaving the North End at this time, we headed toward another nearby landmark, Faneuil Hall - used for years as a market on the first floor and as a public meeting house on the second. The surrounding area is still a market, with outside and inside vendors of all sorts, these days more accustomed to the tourist set than locals (think Fisherman's Wharf in SF here...). After exhausting the possibilities here, we moved back toward the harbor with two more destinations before evening.
Our first late afternoon stop was The Hermione, an exacting replica of the Marquis de Lafayette's ship used to bring aid to the beleagured American forces in the Revolutionary War. The ship is sailing a number of American ports of call on a goodwill and tourism promoting tour, sponsored by the French region where it was built and crewed almost entirely by volunteers. First we viewed some shoreside cultural and living history pieces about the ship an, the region of France it came from, and Lafayette. Today was its last day in port, but the line to walk aboard the ship was so long, there was no way we would be able to make it on before it left, so we ogled it from dockside and set off for another dock attraction that would ALSO be leaving in the next day or so, another tall ship, this time of the Portugese Navy.
The line to board the Portugese Navy training ship Sagres was much shorter and we were able to make it aboard with ease. Although the crew of young Portugese naval cadets largely spoke no English, Portugese is close enough to Spanish that some communication could be had, even though some of their signage was in English and the rest in Portugese. One of the signs that was in English identified the ship as originally being built in 1937 as a training ship for the German Navy, but it was kept by America at the end of the war as a prize, then given to Brazil, which then in turn gifted it to Portugal. Some of the German signage was still affixed to the ship, as were two model 1898 Hotchkiss railguns mounted more for ceremony than combat.
Leaving the Sagres, we turned to thoughts of dinner. Making way back to where the car had been strategically parked so many hours ago, we dined at an unlikely restaurant located in the middle of a smelly, working fishing pier, called simply the No Name Restaurant - it's just always been a restaurant, for close to 100 years. The fare was simple, but authentic, with Michael and Sarah tearing into whole lobsters, and the others sticking with fried shrimp and french fries.
Concluding dinnelr, we revealed the purpose in dawdling soooooo long today. The luxury liner Queen Mary II would be making its departure for a transatlantic voyage tonight after having arrived a few days earleir to commemorate the anniversary of the first transatlantic voage by her parent company, Cunard Lines. In honr of this, celebratory fireworks were scheduled over the harbor, but we were not sure where exactly, so we needed a good vantage point as we could guess at, so we walked to the end of the pier. As luck would have it, the QMII backed out of her berth and parked herself right in front of our pier, so close we could hear the music from her decks as the fireworks began!
Although a long day, everyone thought the ending was well worth it as we drove back to Littleton for the night.
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