Massachusetts

Boston, Massachusetts,
Saturday 18th- Thursday 23rd August

I obviously enjoyed my duration in Philadelphia so much that I almost contrived to oversleep the Saturday morning and miss the early morningtrain I had booked to take me North to Boston.

Boston was one of the cities I felt was particularly noticable from my original Trek America itinerary, and so with my last two weeks alone in the US I was determined that I would visit it.

However despit my perhaps naive conceptions of the city being a small quaint extensionof 17th century England, I am sad to say that the city has been somewhat of a disappointment.

A fact made particularly apparent after how much I had enjoyed Philadelphia.

Ironically Philadelphia bearing agreater resemblence to this ideal than Boston itself.

By the way I am not on some commission from the Philadelphia Tourist Board.

I arrived late Saturday afternoon, and feeling somewhat exhausted by not only the previous few days' exploits, but that of the previouseleven weeks'.

After briefly exploring Boston's delightful nearby Common, I actually went to bed around 7.30pm that night.

On the Sunday I endeavoured to obtain a greater feel for the city by undertaking the 3 mile historical Freedom Trail.

This feat I must have achieved in arecord time of just over 7 hours!

Although this was in due in part tothe occassional deviation both accidental and deliberate from thepainted red path on the pavement laying out the route.

Well no wonder I wasn't accepted at Harvard.

Quincy Market and the incredibly vibrant Little Italy being two particular highlights that had led me astray.

The next day I went to actually enter and re-visit some of the sites on the Freedom Trail I had not done the previous day.

In addition to this I went to find the Boston Tea Party Museum, which was closed, and took an alternative route around the city via the Black History Tour, where again unfortunately access to the historical sites was limited.

I then spent the remainder of the afternoon taking a pleasant walk by the Charles River planning my route for my next day's excursion.

On the Tuedsay I crossed the Charles River and headed north to the city of Cambridge home of America's most prestigious educational instituition, Harvard University.

I can now write on my next CV with all honsety taht I have indeed been to Harvard. However having explored the grounds there was only one thing left for me to do, and that was to watch The Simpsons Movie at a nearby cinema.

I don't know what everyone else thought, but I quite enjoyed it.

Wednesday was to be my favourite day in Massachusetts, and had been soemthing I had been looking forward to in my mind for a long time, even prior to my arrival in Boston, and that was my journey to Province Town and the peninsula of Cape Cod.

Having taken an 8am ferry from Boston Harbour in order to spend a full day there, I still found that was far from enough time.

In the nine hours I was there at Cape Cod I did however manage to explore some of picturesque streets, ascend the Mayflower Pilgrims Monument and take a trail of several miles by the sand dunes and along the northern beaches overlooking the Atlantic, before having something to eat before taking the last ferry of the day back to Boston.

Today has been my final full day in Massachusetts as I will be flying to Burlington in Vermont tomorrow for essentially the final destination proper of my trip across America.

Again I chose to venture out of the city and went by train to the city of Salem. Despite its prominence as a port in the early years after independence, Salem is now eternally famed for the notorious witch trials of 1692.

As you can imagine every aspect of the city is dominated by these events, and serves as the main tourist attraction.

There I visited a couple of witch museums, and walked a couple of miles to visit the recreated 17th century settlement, which being Massachusetts, was of course indefinitely closed....