We walked the north end of the Freedom Trail to the Bunker Hill (actually Breed's Hill-closer to the Charles River) where the first real battle between the British and the colonial militia was fought. The Freedom Trail is marked with a line of bricks on the sidewalks-so you can't get lost. We walked across the bridge over the Charles River to the Old North Church and heard a little talk about the church building and the lanterns used to signal that the British were coming to look for cannons and ammunition hidden in Lexington and Concord. Today we learned that a couple of months earlier, a British fort in New Hampshire had been broken into by other militia who sent the powder and ammunition to Concord. So the story unfolds with each place we visit.
The freedom trail continued to Paul Revere's house and we made it just at 5 pm; everything seems to close at 5 pm- so you can go to dinner and wake up for another fun day traveling. We were ready for dinner and found right next door a wonderful Italian restaurant, with very bright woodwork and pleasant music-like our Paris music- and friendly locals at the next table who wanted to take our picture, and recommended their favorite dishes. We tell everyone we are on our 40th anniversary trip so we get lots of congratulations and best wishes in return. I tried their special lasagne in a tower (Judy guesses they must cook it in a can). Very good with extra sauce. We sat at an open window watching each other and the people walking past on the streets below. There were big crowds at all of the Italian restaurants and bars because the World Cup game was Italy and Brazil. The north end of Boston was and is the Italian section of Boston.
We continued on the Freedom Trail to Faneuil Hall and the Old State House- both used for meetings and early colonial activities. We found a yummy dessert and coffee in one of the food booths in Quincy Market- a very busy collection of food and gift shops and stalls in several restored brick market buildings.
And we made it back to MIT and Baker House. We were able to get inside to look at the main lobby and stairway down to the cafeteria, and could look up to our two windows on the second floor overlooking the tennis courts. So we made it to some of the places from our early days together; we were just married and trying to enjoy life together- and trying to have an open door and offer friendship to the students on our floor. Our life history together began in 1974 along the Charles River- just upstream from where our Nation's history had begun about 200 years earlier.
Today we visited Portsmouth NH, and saw old houses at the Strawberry Banke Museum- a restored section of town with several old wooden buildings from the 1700s and 1800s. And we also visited a large house built by a wealthy merchant John Langdon, who built ships with wood from American forests and loaded them with goods and sent the ships to England and sold the goods and the ships- a double profit. He was an active colonist who signed the Constitution and built some of the early American navy ships and was earlier a privateer during the colonial conflict; he later was governor of New Hampshire.
Now we have made it to our room in an old 1860 house in Kinnebunkport Maine. We had a very nice dinner on the deck overlooking a coastal inlet with a marina- the boats were very low with lots of mud because they have a large tide of almost 15 feet. This is Judy's first time in Maine, so this is our first time together in Maine. But the best part of my day was phone calls from all four of my wonderful and very well grown-up kids. I still greatly enjoy being their Dad, and Grandad to their wonderful kids.
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