Boston babymoon, Post 4: USS Constitution

Towards the end of our week in Boston, we toured the USS Constitution. This is a "wooden-hulled, three-masted heavy frigate of the United States Navy", with an absolutely incredible history.  The Constitution is the world's oldest commissioned naval vessel afloat.  She was named by President George Washington, fought in the War of 1812 against Great Britain, and is affectionately nicknamed "Old Ironsides".  How old is she, you ask?  Only 215 years!

Retired from active service in 1881, she served as a receiving ship until designated a museum ship in 1907 and in 1934 she completed a three-year, 90-port tour of the nation. Constitution sailed under her own power for her 200th birthday in 1997, and again in August 2012, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of her victory over Guerriere. Constitution's stated mission today is to promote understanding of the Navy’s role in war and peace through educational outreach, historic demonstration, and active participation in public events. As a fully commissioned US Navy ship, her crew of 60 officers and sailors participate in ceremonies, educational programs, and special events while keeping the ship open to visitors year round and providing free tours. The officers and crew are all active-duty US Navy personnel and the assignment is considered special duty in the Navy. (Wikipedia)

USS Constitution

After going through security and looking around the museum for a while, we joined a group tour of the Constitution given a US Navy sailor.  He told us about the ship's history in wartime, and also provided lots of anecdotes about life on board the ship both in the past and in the present day.

Bilge pumps that pumped water onto the wooden floor
in order to stop it burning while they fired cannons

The scuttlebutt

Sleeping quarters - the ceiling was so low that even I had
to duck under the crossbeams!

This is another navy ship, USS Cassin Young, that was in the same shipyard:

And here are a few other photos from our time in Boston that didn't fit in any other blog post:

Columbus Day celebrations

Kids playing croquet on Columbus Day

Deep-fried cheesecake (just to say we've had it!)

Boston Common

And a nice dinner at Chez Henri on our last night in Boston...

Lobster

Duck

And that was our week in Boston!

Boston babymoon, Post 3: North End

During our week in Boston, we made a couple of excursions into North End, one of the main downtown areas.  North End is home to Quincy Market, Faneuil Hall, part of the Freedom Trail, Little Italy, the New England Holocaust Memorial, and a lot more!

Quincy Market is a grand old building, constructed in 1824-26 to meet the demand for shop space that had surpassed the capacity of nearby Faneuil Hall.  Inside the market were a variety of food vendors offering everything from ethnic cuisine to seafood to roast dinners.  We ate a couple of meals there and saw some colourful street entertainers outside.

Quincy Market

Some costumed market customers

An entertainer drawing a crowd

Balloon lady

Faneuil Hall (close to Quincy Market) has been a marketplace and meeting hall since 1742.  The building itself has undergone various changes over the years; most notably, it was entirely rebuilt with non-combustible materials at the end of the 1800s.  We don't have any photos of the outside of the building, but it was where we started our Freedom Trail walking tour from.

The Freedom Trail is a path through downtown Boston that weaves past 16 historically significant sites (although our tour only covered part of the full 2.5-mile trail).  Our walking tour was led by a ranger from the National Park Service.  She told us anecdotes about the American Revolution and Paul Revere, while leading us through the streets to a series of sites ending at a statue of Paul Revere outside Old North Church.

A pub similar to the one where secret
Revolution-planning meetings were held

Paul Revere House is the wooden
building on the left

Resting from walking

Statue of Paul Revere outside
Old North Church

A printing press demo we watched after our walking tour

We walked through part of Little Italy during our Freedom Trail walking tour, and went back again afterwards.  The area is famous for its bakeries and many Italian restaurants.

Haha!

A Little Italy side alley

Mike's Pastry

Throughout the day, we had seen a number of people in Little Italy carrying small cardboard boxes tied up with string and labelled with a Mike's Pastry logo.  However, when we actually found Mike's Pastry and saw the line-up of customers out the door and down the street, we decided to go to a slightly less popular bakery instead (where there was still quite a significant line-up)!  Our dinner after the walking tour was three pastries from Modern Pastry.  There hadn't been any prices on the bakery shelves, so I was expecting around $15 or so for three pastries... and was amazed that our order only came to $8!

Modern Pastry options

Our box of goodies

On our way back to the T station, we stumbled upon the New England Holocaust Memorial.  It was in a narrow park beside a main road, but the memorial was extremely well done.  We didn't take any photos, but it was very moving to walk through the six steaming glass towers and read the survivors' and witnesses' recollections.  The six towers represented the six major Nazi death camps, and were engraved with seemingly endless columns of numbers symbolising the six million Jews that died.  It was one of the most creative yet sobering memorials I can ever remember seeing.

Here are a few other random Boston buildings that don't really fit into a particular blog entry...

To be continued...

Boston babymoon, Post 2: Harvard University

On Friday, October 5th - our second full day in Boston - we took a tour of the prestigious 375-year-old Ivy League university, Harvard. Some of its more famous alumni include presidents and prime ministers of the USA and various other countries (including Canada), Ralph Waldo Emerson, Matt Damon, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg!

In the early afternoon we headed to the Harvard Square T station and spent a while wandering around the nearby streets before our tour. (I should also mention that, despite it being fall, the weather was warm and sunny during our first two days in Boston. After that it turned cold and rainy for the rest of the trip!) We ate a burger lunch and discovered the World's Only Curious George Store, which was a lot of fun to explore... and of course we bought a Curious George onesie for our own upcoming little monkey!

At 2pm we went to the Information Centre to join our tour. It was free and student-led - our guide was one of only five Kiwis (i.e. New Zealanders) studying at Harvard! For the next hour or more, our guide led our group of 20-30 tourists around the grounds of Harvard, showing us various buildings and telling us lots of interesting anecdotes about their history. He also described different aspects of student life to us, and it was really interesting to hear how Harvard differs from the university experience we are familiar with.

Harvard Yard

Harvard Yard

Oldest dormitory building on campus

Science building

Memorial Church

Memorial Church

The only building we went inside was Memorial Hall. It looks like a church, as it was designed and built by church builders, but it is in fact an entirely secular building established as a memorial to former students of Harvard who were casualties of war (initially the Civil War, but now all wars since then). Memorial Hall also includes the freshman dining hall, and is where Harvard graduation ceremonies used to be held (until they became so big that they are now held outdoors).

Below is a photo of our tour guide standing beside the statue of John Harvard. It is one of the most photographed statues in the USA. However, the statue contains three errors: (1) the year of Harvard's founding is out by 2 years; (2) the statue credits John Harvard with being the university's founder, when in fact he was a benefactor who gave the university a few hundred books; and (3) the statue is not even of John Harvard, as by the time they decided to make the statue, he was long-dead and no one knew what he had looked like!

John Harvard statue

The building we found the most interesting was the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library. Harry Elkins Widener was a wealthy 1907 graduate of Harvard, and he was a prolific book collector. He had a goal to acquire originals of seven of the most valuable books in the world. He had just completed a voyage to Europe, where he'd obtained the final book for his collection (something by Francis Bacon?), when he and his parents boarded the Titanic. Harry and his father (and the book) went down with the ship, but his mother and her maid survived in the lifeboats.

Harry's mother then donated $3.5 million to Harvard to build a library in his memory. Harvard tore down their existing library and built the Widener Library in its place. Two of the conditions of the donation were that there must always be a vase of fresh flowers in the library's entrance, and that no brick or stone could ever be removed from the building... or the ownership of the library would revert to the City of Cambridge (i.e. the city where Harvard is located).

To this day, Harvard studiously upholds these conditions. When the library needed to be extended - but no walls could be removed to do so - the library was instead extended down six storeys below ground level, and then underground most of the way across the open yard between the library and Memorial Church. I'm not sure if this was during the 1997-2004 renovation or not, but Wikipedia says that that renovation cost $97 million!

Unfortunately, after the tour ended and we thought we'd go and explore this fascinating labyrinth, we discovered that a Harvard ID is required to get into the library. No doubt that's to stop the library being filled with nosy tourists wanting to do exactly that!

The Widener Library - it extends underground most of the
way across to where this photo was taken from!

Resting on the library's front steps

And that was our tour of Harvard. Fascinating and highly recommended!