Apr 25 -Boston, Paul Revere, Freedom Trail

Paul Revere's grave marker

We drove  the car to Boston. Once there we went on a walking tour of the Freedom Trail. Around 1952 the Freedom Trail was proposed in Boston. The idea was to join together 16 of Boston’s historic places with a path that could be followed by anyone so that they wouldn’t miss any of the history. Rather than navigate the “red line” around the city ourselves we went with a guide who was in costume and in character. Our guide was Paul Revere’s wife Rachel.  It was a fun and great tour, learning about Sam Adams (nothing to do with beer). Benjamin Franklin’s upbringing.  Did you know that because of the “rules of engagement” Paul Revere was not killed when he was captured because he himself was not carrying a gun.  We learned about the Son’s of Liberty who were some of the early organized dissenters of British rule. The Boston Tea Party happened when protestors against the tax on tea disguised themselves and snuck onto British ships and then threw overboard 342 chests of tea. It was considered unpatriotic to drink tea after this and is one of the reasons coffee is so popular in the USA. The Boston Tea Party was just the lead up to The Revolutionary War, and eventually the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  The Declaration of Independence was read out from a second story of a building in what is now downtown Boston and continues to be read out from the same location every 4th of July. All of this happened in and around the Boston area.

Paul, who has been famous for nearly 200 years was the chief outhouse inspector

Boston Harbour

Boston Library

April 24.5 Please comment

If you're following along on the blog, please leave a comment so we know who's out there. We won't publish the list of followers, its just nice to know that someone is participating along with us.

Apr 24 - RI to MA

As we continue to move north, we are heading  through Rhode Island to Bellingham, Massachusetts, which is about an hour outside of Boston. 

We checked into Circle CG Farm Campsite and worked on doing laundry and organizing the motorhome. 

Campground fish pond. No 'gators in this one.

Apr 23 -Lebanon, CT

Walmart parking lot here we come!  We strategized how to get our big rig around NYC rather than through it. I thought we had the perfect plan.  As we were getting ready to turn onto a toll highway, the sign read NO TRUCKS!  Uh Oh!  Peter quickly pulled out of the toll highway lane and I began looking at how we could get where we needed to go.  The GPS always wanting to reroute us back to the road we are not allowed to take.  Well, after a longer route, we got across the Hudson River on a bridge that fit us and we made it to a Walmart in Lebanon, Conneticuit for the night.  We were able to get groceries and more!  Thank you Lord for the mercy and leading you give us. 

Apr 22 -The Big Apple again

 We are on our own touring NYC today.  We are trying public transportation again, trusting it will go smoother than yesterday.

We traveled by shuttle, airbus, train and subway to get to the Staten Island ferry, which goes directly past the Statue of Liberty.  Tickets to enter the Statue of Liberty need to be ordered in adavance so we felt the best view would be from the water. When we returned to Manhattan we hopped on the subway to take it uptown to the Empire State Building.  The audio tour and view from the 86^th floor of the Empire State Building was fantastic!! This was one of the places that Zane wanted to go to.

Onward to Times Square, which is really cool!  I can’t get over how many people there are in NYC!  We loved the Toys R Us store right by Times Square, it has a Ferris wheel inside the store!  Cool!    

From the 86th floor of the Empire State building

The East River

Manhattan

Famous for Art Deco

Toys R Us at Times Square

Times Square people everywhere

Outside of the Lego Store

Apr 21, New York City

We booked a 6 hour long walking tour with RealNewYorkTours.com. Our tour began at 10 so we took the hotel shuttle to the airport, then took an airbus (monorail) to the train station, then a train to Penn Station NYC.  On the way to meet our guide, we saw the smallest Tim Horton’s we have ever seen! The lobby is about 9 feet by 9 feet. It is also the first Tim’s we have seen since October of last year.  Yummy!! 

We met our tour guide, Max, who began our tour by getting us familiar with the subway. We headed to the Dakota Hotel, where John Lennon was killed, then on to Central Park, SoHo, Chinatown, Little Italy, the Garment District and the Financial District …… ending our tour at Ground Zero at the former World Trade Center .

Our guide gave us great instructions for getting to the bus station as we figured we would take the bus back to New Jersey.  We arrived at the bus station, bought tickets and found out that the last bus that we needed had left the station 1.5 hours earlier.  So, plan B we had to take the subway or walk to the train station and take the train back to the airport and shuttle back to the hotel.  Somewhere in the midst of all the confusion Peter lost his credit card or left it in a Metro/bus ticket machine.  So, we stopped and he called to cancel his card.  3.5 hours later we arrived back to the hotel, thankful to be back from the Big Apple.

Someone's dinner in Chinatown

House number 75-1/2

Total width of this home 9'

Streets of New York

First new building to replace the WTC

Ground Zero where WTC1 once stood