We found Boston to be a most amazing place with a rich historical background, there is a lovely walk showing the sights and sounds of Boston’s trek to freedom. Here is a photo of the map, the red line shows where you walk and you can pick up a map at the beginning in the park to be able to read information at each stop.

If you look just to the left and below the centre of the map you’ll see the two parks, we stayed at the Park Plaza located just below them, it was only a minute to the park where we enjoyed Boston’s summer weather and the squirrels who were totally unafraid. There’s lots to be seen in the park or you can just enjoy the scenery. Once you walk through on an almost northerly direction there’s lights to cross the road and you can enter the Cheeers bar, I think it’s the bar that inspired the TV programme, you can walk down the stairs featured in the series and have a meal there, we eventually did so and brought back a couple of souvenirs.

The day after we got to Boston we walked a lot of the Freedom Trail, we saw many fascinating things including the harbour which was the site of the Boston Tea Party where they dumped the load of tea, including historic cemeteries where Mother Goose is said to have been buried, I put up a photo of the lady’s tombstone a few days ago.

Naturally I had to take a photo of the plaque at the Old Corner Bookstore. Many famous publications were published here including The Scarlet Letter.

Other places that made an impression on me were the Boston Massacre Site where five people were killed during a riot between the Colonists and the British soldiers on the 5th March 1770. I didn’t take a photo. Faneuil Hall was amazing, a meeting place and market place we bought some lunch there and I had a lovely experience on the steps outside. I’d bought Mexican and was carefully making a mess on my lap, the gentleman next to me offered me a serviette saying ‘I just happen to have a spare’ I gratefully accepted saying ‘I just happen to have made a mess’. It was the first of many pleasant interactions with people in America, they were lovely and helped me wherever I went.

The place that resonated the most was Paul Revere’s House. It was a part of the Trail and we were able to pay a modest fee to enter and walk around it. A couple of tour guides inside were quite happy to answer questions, one lady carefully pointing out which furniture were used by the Revere family. As you can see by the photo it’s fairly small by today’s standards but eight or nine people would have lived there. The walls are thin and people lived very close together so when Revere rode in shouting ‘the British are coming’ it would have been very easy for them to hear him.

One other map I’m including is a map of what Boston would have looked like in Revere’s time, it shows how much of the foreshore has been reclaimed and how much smaller it would have been.

Boston is more than just these few points of interest, as you can see if you click through into the City of Boston Freedom Trail website I’ve only skimmed the surface. It was really walkable and an invaluable introduction into the history of Boston. We took a couple of hours and didn’t walk across the river as we were suffering from having travelled for almost 30 hours the previous day, due to crossing the international date line we’d ended up having two of Thursday the 1st of August and by that time we were rather tired….I know, a strange concept.