John Kerry Burger!! (Day 14) 9/22/09

Today we woke up and rushed to downtown Boston for our day of touring the Freedom Trail.

I was absolutely exhausted so Dad and I went to DD's to get some 'caaaahfee'. We caught the 11:00 tour of the Trail, which was led by the tour guide Ray (or did he say Josh?). This guy is less of a tour guide and more of a comedic actor. He put on a show that was well worth the time and the sore feet.

Not a pirate, a privateer!

He first walked us through the Boston Common near where the State house was (and still is). He talked about how people from the 18th century all the way to modern day gather outside here to debate political topics. The top of the State House is covered in gold leaf, which was removed and covered with a grey paint during World War II so that the Nazi U-Boats couldn't spot its reflection from the ocean.

The next stop was the Granary Graveyard. He talked about how back in the day this place was just a littered mess of dead bodies. There were cows grazing and you could see dogs running around with dead people's arms in their mouths. Eventually, somebody got this place cleaned up. Now there are a bunch of thin-stone gravestones everywhere. There are so many bodies there that out of the 2000 gravestones there, each one represents 6-8 people. Do the math.

Us holding a real-1700's tea block. It was as hard as a brick.

After this site we went past several others including the State House and Faneuil Hall. Faneuil Hall is essentially a food court (Quincy Market) and across the street is a small strip mall with stores like A&F which can be heard and smelled from several hundred feet away.

Lunch today was New England Clam Chowda for us (Greta of course had pizza.) I washed it down with a little old-fashioned 8oz. Coca-Cola. Boy, they always taste better in one of those containers. I topped this off with a little Bahstun Kream Pah and we waddled away happily for the second segment of our tour. Despite the immense amount of caffeine that I had consumed that day (Two coffees back at the hotel, one before the beginning of the tour and a coke with lunch, probably a total of 250+ mg), I was quite tired on the beginning of this part of the tour. Dad says that this is because I was in the process of digesting a lot of food.

Site of the old 6-lane highway. It's now a dozen or so feet under that grass.

We went over to the north side and crossed over the park where a huge, overhead expressway used to be. Now, it was nowhere to be found. Dad was very confused, until the tour guide explained they had put the entire freaking thing underground. They had to displace enough dirt for this to fill the entire Yankees Stadium three times. Bostonians said 'Sure, let's do it!', and started driving for New York until somebody told them that this was just a metaphor.

We then went through the North End which used to be where the actual city was. Where the highrises now are is where people sent their cows to graze. This area was always occupied by the oppressed people in the world, including the Irish during the potato famine, then Jews, and is now occupied by the Italians (displaced during the days of Mussolini) who are still making those delicious cannoli to this day. Ray spent a good half-hour telling us which restaurants to go to, which was pretty much all of them.

Cannoli Joint

After talking about these restaurants, we were walking past an alley and Ray pointed at three Cadillacs parked side by side silently. Someone chuckled out 'I wonder how many bodies are in that trunk!'. He shushed them and we moved on in silence, questioning to some degree just how serious our tour guide was...

Paul Revere's house

The next stop was the Revere household which was pretty much a grey clapboard house with old colored windows. I don't really remember much about this house, but the next immediate destination was the Old North Church. Remember why this one's famous?

Statue of Revere with the church behind him

If you noticed, the statue of Paul Revere on the horse is actually running in the wrong direction, The tour guide said that if you look closely he's pointing his finger back as if to say 'Oh crap, I missed it!'. The real reason for this, however is that the people in the (newer) church opposite the Old North did not want to walk out every Sunday to be looking up the rear of an equine.

Church from the other side

After this, we went up to Cop's Hill to look at the grave of our Tour Guide's alter ego. He told us about some of the major events in his life, and how he died. Apparently he had been dueling his old arch nemesis, and even though he won the duel and killed the other guy, his nemesis's bullet hit him and caused a mortal infection.

Finally finished with looking at old stuff for the day, we headed out to meet Chelsea over at Harvard. We took the 'T' as they call it here to Cambridge 'Our fair city!' Massachusetts. Dad and Greta got their caffeine fixes at Peet's Coffee (I avoided any more after what I'd already had, and bought some water.) I thought it was oddly funny how, right next to the coffee store was a quite large 'Kaplan Test Scores and Admisssions' office. Quite fitting for at town holding three school's in the world's top ten hardest to get into (some would say MIT, Wellsley and Harvard are *the* hardest, I would say there are probably a few more like Oxford).

We caught up with Chelsea for the first time in a while. For all of you who don't remember, Chelsea Sky Link is the person who has perfect SAT, ACT, and all of the other test scores, and was admitted into every, I repeat *Every* school she applied to. These all being the Ivy League schools. They even wrote a Chicago Tribune article about her, on the front page with her picture. And the best thing is, she's so modest she never even brings it up. Wow.

She showed us the typical tourist sites in Harvard, like the statue of John Harvard which is known as 'the statue of three lies'. These lies being that

a) John Harvard didn't found the school, he just donated some books to the library
b) The model of whom the statue was carved isn't John Harvard and
c) They even got the date of founding wrong

Quite some mistakes for some of the world's smartest! We were all quite hungry at this point, so we quickly were guided through the Dining Hall (which kinda reminded me of Hogwarts) and then went to the local burger joint. They had a massive menu with names of burgers like, 'The Ted Kennedy: A plump, liberal amount of beef with tomatoes....' and 'The Michelle Obama, a hot, cajun burger with....
I ended up eating the John Kerry (as he was the only one of this list of whom I've met). It turns out that the only difference between the Kerry and Kennedy burgers is a small thing, like one has lettuce and one doesn't.

Again very full, we headed out after saying goodbye to Chelsea, and took the T back to Lowell. We got a small scare when we were leaving the train's parking garage and the exit was closed. We frantically drove around in search for another, and finally learned that there was another exit on the opposite side of this concrete maze. We made it there, drove back to the hotel and fell right asleep.