I started out for Boston early in the afternoon on Friday.  After driving on the interstate for a couple of hours, I decided that, although those roads are great when you just want to get somewhere fast, I really wanted to see more of the countryside and towns around me.  I got off at Albany and took a route east across northern Massachusetts, through the lovely Berkshire Hills.  There was a little rain along the way, but the roads wound lazily up and down through the hills, and my GPS seemed to be feeling adventurous, taking me on some rather unexpected shortcuts, so the drive was really a lovely experience.

I arrived early in the evening, and met up with my friend David, who would be taking me in for a few days and showing me the local area.  The next morning we took the subway into the city and, because I seem to be on an accidental history tour of the US, we explored some of what is called the Freedom Trail, essentially a walking route through the city that connects a number of the historic sites that were important during the Revolutionary War.  We walked across a bridge into the city center, and got a nice view of the skyline, some small sailboats in the bay (hello again Atlantic Ocean, it’s been a while!), and the Hatch band shell where the Boston Pops give their concerts (you can just see it on the right).

We first visited Faneuil Hall, which is a large marketplace, and contains over 50 international restaurants.  The hall has been used for the same purpose since 1743 when it was first constructed by merchant Peter Faneuil, and is where Samuel Adams, James Otis, and others gave speeches to foment insurrection and separation from England.  There’s a statue of Samuel Adams out front, but I wish I had gotten a picture of the doors to the hall, which were original and showed beautifully their wear from over 270 years of public use.

Near the hall was the famous Quincy Market, another famous merchant center, but slightly newer, built in 1824.

It was full of vendors and restaurants, and is a popular tourist attraction.

Cheers Bar was also located in Quincy Market, but I think this is probably not the original location (I think the original was below street level), but a satellite bar.

After wandering the market for a while and having some lunch (another thing I haven’t had in ages, white pizza!), we walked through some of the lovely old cobbled streets of the North End toward the Old North Church.

If you remember the story from the Revolutionary War, the Old North Church was where the lanterns were hung to warn that the British troops were attacking Lexington and Concord.  The signal was “one if by land, two if by sea,” after which Paul Revere left on his midnight ride in April 1775 to warn the colonists.  The church is all original, and you can see the windows above where the lanterns were hung.  The weather vane is the original, from 1740, and the bells are also from 1744, so the steeple hasn’t changed at all since the time of that ride.

The inside has also been preserved in original condition, which seems remarkable when you consider that the church continues to be used for weekly services.  It’s interesting to see the old box seating.  Although they’re plain now, I understand that the families that owned the boxes would decorate them, and heaters and foot warmers would be used in winter months in the unheated church.

We were told that the organ is also original, and was the first organ ever made from all American materials.  It’s still played at services, and if the power goes out, still has bellows so that it can be operated mechanically.

Behind the church was a modern memorial for the thousands of service men and women who have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Perhaps because of my own deployments, I found it rather moving to see all of these dog tags hung together in this historic site.

Nearby we were able to learn more about early printing in the colonies, including the Boston edition of the Declaration of Independence.  This very lively and informative gentleman told us all about how fussy and slow the printing process was, and he demonstrated by printing a copy of the Declaration on linen paper very similar to that used at the time.

In another room nearby, this lovely lady showed us how chocolate was made by hand, including using a mortar and pestle to grind the beans.  Since there were some samples on offer, I stayed for a while!

Back on the Freedom Trail, we passed by Copp’s Hill Burial Ground, in existence since 1659, and the second oldest cemetery in Boston.  There’s a view of the harbor from the hill, and during the occupation of Boston, the British held a battery at Copp’s Hill and fired on Bunker Hill in nearby Charlestown.

I was really looking forward to our next stop, the USS Constitution, and I wasn’t disappointed!  In the early years after the Revolution, American merchant vessels were being harassed by British and French ships.  In the Naval Act of 1794, the government authorised the construction of the first American Navy ships, six frigates, of which the USS Constitution was one, built in Boston.  They were designed to be strong and well armed enough to defeat other ships of their size, and fast enough to outrun anything larger.  The Constitution was never defeated in battle, and is especially noted for victories in the second war against the British, the War of 1812, where she earned the nickname “Old Ironsides” when Britich cannonballs bounced off of her oak sides.  She also served during the Civil War, was used as a Navy training ship, and carried artwork to the Paris Exposition of 1878.  Still in active service, she’s manned by US Navy crew.  Currently in dry dock for repairs, she’s still a huge and impressive site.  Her canon have been removed for the repairs, and are sitting on the dock.

Some of the repairs are to the forward keel, where beams are being replaced.

The rigging is also huge, with each one of these ropes being about as big around as my arm!

This isn’t a great picture of sweaty and windblown me, but I’m there for scale!

We explored below decks too, including the captain’s cabin.

And saw that each of the canon had a name, the one at this port being the Raging Eagle.

The next picture is interesting for a couple of reasons.  First, you can see a modern US warship, the USS Cassin Young, a Fletcher-class destroyer, that was launched in 1943, fought at the Battle of Okinawa and in the Korean War, was decommissioned in 1960, and is now a memorial ship.  The second interesting part of the picture is the caisson that you can see behind the Constitution.  Rather than lift the ship into dry dock, a floating dam, or caisson, was floated into the dock behind her to close it off from the ocean, and then the dock was drained.  When repairs are complete, the water will be let back in and the caisson floated out again.

There was also a museum nearby to expain more of the design and history of the ship.  Rather than get any souvenirs at the gift shop, I decided to leave a remembrance of myself instead — I signed the back of a copper plate that would be used in the hull repairs.  So when the Constitution puts to sea again, something of me will go with her.  What a nice thought!

Leaving the Constitution, we headed up to Bunker Hill.  Wouldn’t you know it, the monument marking the site there was another obelisk!  I suppose it’s because they’re easy to build and see from a long distance, but obelisks must have been in fashion in the 1800s when these monuments were being built, and they seem to be everywhere!  There’s a statue of Col William Prescott there as well.  He led the defence of Bunker Hill in 1775, and although the British were victorious, they lost half their men.  It was considered a moral victory by the colonists, who proved that they would, and could, stand up to the British.

Having reached the northern end of the Freedom Trail, and being hot and tired from walking many miles, we headed back to the subway.  We got off at Boston Common to change trains, and decided to stop for a lemonade there by the fountain.

There were lots of kids cooling off in the wading pool on this hot day, and also bands playing around us.

We took a stroll through the Public Gardens, which were established in 1837.

I was very surprized to see a statue of Tadeusz Kosciuszko in the gardens!  Mount Kosciuszko is the highest mountain in Australia, and that’s the only place I had ever heard the name.  Looking him up for the first time on Wikipedia, however, I’m surprized that I haven’t heard more about him.  As part of his very interesting and adventurous life, he took part in the American Revolutionary War as a colonel in the Continental Army, and as a military architect, he designed the fortifications at West Point on the Hudson.  He later moved back to his native Poland, and served as a major general in the army during the Polish-Russian War of 1792, and led an uprising against Russia.  The defeat of the uprising, however, led to the third partitian of Poland in 1795.  He was pardoned by Tsar Paul I in 1796 and emigrated to the US again, where he was a close friend of Thomas Jefferson.  He was an abolitionalist, and left a will granting all of his assets to the freedom and education of American slaves, but since he had moved to Switzerland before his death, the will could not be executed.  In Krakow, Poland, there’s a monument mound dedicated to the national hero, and the Australian mountain was named after him by Polish explorer Paul Strzelecki, who thought that the mountain resembled the mound at Krakow.  I really recommend reading more about Tadeusz Kosciuszko if, like me, you know little about him.  He really lived a remarkable life!

One final site caught my eye as we headed back to the subway and home — the Central Burying Ground in Boston Common.  It’s a strangely eerie place, considering that it was surrounded by concerts and a very active city, with tombstones on top of a rise, and old crypts with wooden doors below.  But here’s an interesting tie-in with an earlier post… if you remember, when I went to the National Art Gallery in Washington DC, I saw the famous painting of George Washington by by Gilbert Stuart.  Well, Stuart is buried here at Boston Common, among other famous dead folk.

I really didn’t set out to do a history tour of the US, or even of Boston, but at least here in the eastern states there are so many historical sites that people live and work among every day.  Boston is a very young and vibrant city, with a thriving technology industry and so many things to see and do, and yet there’s a real sense of continuity with the past as well.  There’s live music and street festivals wherever you go, yet you can take a peaceful walk along the Charles River and feel that you’re far outside a big city, and the mountains of New Hampshire are only a couple of hours drive away.  You can almost feel the tension between the old and the new.  I think I could spend years here and still be finding new things to do!