The Freedom Trail

We took a great tour with the first guide for the freedom trail. He knew his stuff and loved acting the part as we traveled around Boston shouting "Huzzah!" I especially loved remembering about the Sons of Liberty and the Boston tea party, which my mom taught us about in homeschooling when I was young.

Our favorite fountain in Boston, where a man often plays the piano. Today we saw a Shakespeare Festival with a stage set up in the park. 

The funniest thing was that Lexi accidentally left her water bottle and collapsable umbrella on the table when we ate lunch and when we passed by again later we saw a water bottle and an umbrella! They were still there hours later...or so we thought. Someone had switched out an old umbrella with tape on it for her newer umbrella. We decided their reasoning must have been "It's not stealing if you trade one umbrella for another"! Well later is was absolutely pouring rain so we were very grateful for the old, taped umbrella. Still, we couldn't stop laughing every time we saw it. 

Our favorite place along the freedom trail was this graveyard where Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, James Otis and others are buried. The funny thing is that there are about 10,000 people buried here one on top of each other; some in vaults etc. but not nearly that many tombstones. Besides the famous people, the hill used to wash all the tombstones into the street and the caretaker would come place the tombstones around the graveyard in some random place, that's why so many are cracked and broken. 

Along the freedom trail, statue of Benjamin Franklin, right next to the little church referenced in National Treasure. It was fun to hear about "one if by land, two if by sea" and the original story.

 Milah's diapers have been changed everywhere :) including park benches -- which seem cleaner than the public bathrooms to me!

                   

Getting a Canoli at Mike's -- a really famous canoli shop. 

Ok, so this image is from the internet, it wasn't that fancy.

Pouring rain! We took refuge from the absolutely pouring rain by eating dinner at a really picturesque Italian restaurant looking through a charming window with cute live flower pots out at the pouring rain -- what a fun atmosphere!

My personal favorite experience of the day was 

Ta da da...playing a Steinway piano! That's always been one of my dreams! Vivian took us for a special tour upstairs. I found that I loved the sound of this baby grand, but the 9' grand with the light touch just let my fingers fly over the keys and the full sound vibrate through the room. Oh what a dream, it seemed unreal to be playing a 9' steinway.