It was a beautiful trip, and a much-needed break from the routine. Since our one-year wedding anniversary was right around the corner, this trip was kind of our nerdy honeymoon getaway.
Highlights of our trip:
• Going to Concord, Mass. to see a piece of history. Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne lived in this town for a time. All three famous writers are also buried at the same cemetery in town. (Thoreau's very plain headstone is pictured above. He's buried with family members, with a larger headstone naming all of them.)
• Exploring downtown Boston via the Freedom Trail. On the trail includes Paul Revere's home, the site of the first public school in the United States, the site that inspired the Boston Tea Party, among other momentous U.S. historical events.
• Eating some delightful clam chowder. We had bowls at Union Oyster House, in downtown Boston, and had a fancy dinner with soup at Legal Seafoods in Cambridge. (Another food Boston is obsessed with: Doughnuts!)
• Seeing one of the largest rowing races in the world: The Head of the Charles. This was big for me because I am a longtime rower. I always heard about this race. We never raced in it because it was too expensive to enter and too far away for it to be at all practical, but it's kind of the stuff of legends. After that, we walked around Harvard Square and took a peek at the university.
• Spending our last night of the trip in Salem, Mass., home of the Salem Witch Trials. One of the oldest marked cemeteries in the United States is in this town, with death dates going back to the 1700s. There was also a lot of hubbub with Halloween happenings. They really capitalize on the ghost story tours and goofy touristy stuff. But my favorite part was probably seeing the Salem Witch Trials memorial. Twenty people were executed during a one-year span the late 1600s for being witches or wizards. It's kind of crazy how far hysteria went in that case.
One thing I won't miss: Boston drivers. It's not an easy town to navigate at all, and drivers are super aggressive, but I managed.
How has the fall been treating you?
