Boston. Boston, Boston, Boston. What can I say? It was nothing that I expected, yet was definitely all good! When I was a little girl I read
Make Way for Ducklings. (I should have gotten a clue from the ducks that there is a lot of traffic.) Then I read
The Trumpeter Swan by EB White. (There were a few more clues in that book.)I watched the Walt Disney movie
Johnny Tremain and read the book and was charmed by this historic town by the sea. (Even then they were overrun by Redcoats.) Then I became a teacher and made available to my students
Why Don't You Get a Horse, Sam Adams? by Jean Fritz. I read several biographies of Benjamin Franklin (He lived in Boston before he fled to Philadelphia. The key word is "fled". Well, there is more to THAT story.) Obviously I tend to focus on the charm. Well last weekend I had a reality check as we were cut off by drivers galore! The amazing thing is that the people you meet in town are really nice! The drivers though are crazy! The Italian food is wonderful! Surprisingly the history was tough to find. If you are planning a trip to Boston with kids for the history, I have a few tips to help you get the most out of the experience.
First watch the Walt Disney movie,
Johnny Tremain. Can you tell I really like this movie? I love, love, love this movie. If I wasn't so overwhelmed by traffic (one if by foot and two if by car...no wait, I'm getting my poetry mixed up!) I would have walked through town singing, "The Liberty Tree."
"Plant the seed in our homeland, boys.
Let it grow where all can see.
Feed it with our devotion, boys.
Call it the Liberty Tree.
It's a tall old tree and a strong old tree
And we are the Sons
Yes, we are the Sons
The Sons of Liberty!
Save it from the Storm, boys.
Water down its roots with tea.
And the sun will always shine
on the ole Liberty Tree.
It's a tall old tree and a strong old tree.
And we are the Sons
Yes, we are the Sons
The Sons of Liberty!
March along with the piper, boys.
We were born forever free.
Let's go pay the piper, boys,
beneath the Liberty Tree.
It's a tall old tree and a strong old tree.
And we are the Sons
Yes, we are the Sons
The Sons of Liberty!
Pay the price their asking, boys.
Always pay the tyrant's fee.
Never give up the struggle, boys.
Fight for the Liberty Tree.
It's a tall old tree and a strong old tree.
And we are the Sons
Yes, we are the Sons
The Sons of Liberty!
Stand for the rights of man, boys.
Stand against all tyranny.
Hang the lamps of freedom, boys,
High on the Liberty Tree.
It's a tall old tree and a strong old tree.
And we are the Sons,
Yes, we are the Sons,
The Sons of Liberty!
N' it will grow as we grow, boys.
It will be as strong as we.
We must cling to our faith, boys-
Faith in the Liberty Tree.
It's a tall old tree and a strong old tree.
And we are the Sons,
Yes, we are the Sons,
The Sons of Liberty!"-Walt Disney's "Johnny Tremain"
Here is a youtube link to see this sung from an excerpt from the Disney movie,
Johnny Tremain. This is so good, that my kids stopped National Treasure II to sing this with me. Made long before I was born,it was shown every year in the grade school I attended and it's still one of my favorite movies. Sadly I did not see Johnny Tremain anywhere in Boston. But I did imagine him quite a bit, walking through the streets, looking for a job after he injured his hand, running errands for the Sons of Liberty...My kids couldn't believe I was imagining all this. Well, I have an overactive imagination. But do show the movie and read the books mentioned above with your kids before you come to Boston! They will see a lot of sites along the Freedom Trail from the movie!
If you can, go to Minute Man Historical Park before doing Boston. Their visitor center has a lot of these books and the movie. They also had tour guide books on the Freedom Trail, none of which I found on the trail. We enjoyed the particular version I got: Boston's Freedom Trail, 8th Edition, Illustrations by Jack Frost; Text by Robert Booth ;Revised by Cindi Pietrzyk. It has a map, illustrations and text. The illustrations were great so we knew what we were looking for. Otherwise we might have walked past everything! Although there is a red line painted on the street and red bricks in the pavement, other markers are rather obscure, at least for us. When we arrived at each place, I read the most interesting bits and pieces from the text. Of course, any reference to Lafayette was important!
Although everyone told us to take the T (subway), we drove. That went very well, until we came upon the barricades for a marathon. Imagine that, a marathon in Boston! It was not THE marathon but it was a race. We parked near Boston Common, which begins the Freedom Trail. As we walked along Boston Common, I noticed a sign to my left that said, "Public Gardens." Wait a minute, isn't that the place where Make Way for Ducklings and The Trumpeter Swan hung out? Let's take a detour!
Here are the swan boats...
Here are the baby ducks...
Wow, here is the swan's nest!
An image of loveliness against the backdrop of modern Boston...
Back to Boston Common where we saw the Memorial Day flag display...
I read aloud a lot of interesting things about
Boston Common, but perhaps the most interesting was that Lafayette was there on his 1825 Grand Tour, when the Boston schoolchildren sang "La Marseillaise."
Not far from here is where the Liberty Tree
once stood. The Liberty Tree was the scene of a Stamp Act protest where the stamp collector was burned in effigy. Hmmm, they were a tougher crowd than the
men in Colonial Williamsburg who had "words" with their stamp collector at Charleton's Coffeehouse! It's always interesting to note the similarities in the protests of the colonies when they were otherwise quite different from each other.
Apparently the Sons of Liberty did hang lanterns in the tree. Due to its symbolic nature, the British eventually chopped it down.
Here is the
Granary Cemetary,
where we found the graves of Sam Adams, James Otis, Paul Revere and John Hancock.
I thought I got a picture of the
Old Corner Bookstore, but I can't find it. We had an ah-ha moment when I read about this place. It was the publishing house for
Nathaniel Hawthorne! He told us all about it the day before! He told us all about his publishers, Ticknor and Fields (which eventually became Houghton Mifflin). Humorously it is across the street from a modern bookstore on the corner, Borders. In front was this statute...or is it? The bird in the palm of her hand is real!
This is the
Old South Meeting House, which you see in the
Johnny Tremain movie. That is the scene where Sam Adams speaks code words in front of a crowd, signaling Johnny to blow his whistle to alert the "Indians." For a small fee, you can tour the building. I would have liked to but we were pressed for time.

Modern music was blasting. At last we found
Quincy Market which was highly recommended by a friend for lunch! That place is neat. It was frustratingly ultra crowded when we were there. We got
delicious Italian food at Al Mercatino. My family had been leaning towards Mexican but they were so glad I had picked this spot!
Refueled and reenergized, we headed to the spots I was most looking forward to. The
Paul Revere House...
Then we saw the
Old North Church.

"One if by land, two if by sea." The Paul Revere House and Old North Church are in what's called the North End which felt a long way from everywhere we had toured that morning. Even though the entire Freedom Trail is about 3 miles long, I gained a huge appreciation for the colonists who traveled the town. Most of the streets are modern but the street in front of the Paul Revere House is cobblestone and I had to be very careful walking on them so I wouldn't twist an ankle. I always hear that roads weren't great back then. Today we have great roads but crazy drivers...
We crossed the Charles River

and as we did so, I looked for the Old North Church.

Hmmm, not quite the setting Paul Revere had the night of his midnight ride.
Then we went to see the
USS Constitution We were running out of time, nearly 4pm, so we did not do the tour or museum. I was thrilled to see this flag...just like the one I made for my son as a prop when he portrayed Oliver Hazard Perry in our
early 19th century history presentation.

then we went to
Bunker Hill. Lafayette was here for his Grand Tour in 1825. He helped to lay the cornerstone. He also took home to Paris some soil from Bunker Hill. Later when he died, he was buried with that soil. Finally we went to the scene of the Battle of Bunker Hill. Sadly there is no longer a view. It is surrounded by modern buildings. The story though is great. The Redcoats occupied the city. The patriots occupied the hill. General Knox got the idea to transport cannons from Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York over the mountains, in the snow, to set up on Bunker Hill. He did it with his men. The British woke up one morning with cannons staring them down and they fled the city! We made the obligatory climb up the monument, nearly 300 steps!
My friend had told us that we HAD to go to
Mike's Pastry shop, which was somewhere near the Paul Revere House. No one at Bunker Hill knew where it was so I suggested we cross the river. That much was obvious. Well if you walk, they will come. As we crossed the bridge, I saw someone carrying a box that said, "Mike's Pastry." I asked for directions and got a rough idea. We headed that way and saw more of Mike's pastry boxes. The closer we got the more boxes we saw! Finally we were there. Talk about crowds! How would we ever get through that line? Well the gelato line was much shorter. We aren't huge ice cream fans if there is no Bluebell. Since moving to Virginia we have discovered gelato and that is pretty good! Mike's gelato is certainly delicious,but I can't imagine how those pastries taste. There were empty Italian pastry shops everywhere...the crowds were all at Mike's!