Boston-Day Four

 

We still had our rental car on our last day in the city so we drove over to Salem. We visited the Salem Witch Museum which gives you a history of the trials and of witchcraft itself. After that we visited the Salem Witch Trials memorial. An appropriately somber memorial to the 19 people who were killed during the summer of the trials. Then we hopped back in the car and drove over to The House of Seven Gables. We did not pay for the tour, but walked around and looked at the home and grounds before heading to the waterfront for lunch. At lunch we had a nice view of the water and a ship called The Friendship of Salem which I still don't know the significance of since there was no sign explaining anything about it.
After lunch we drove over to Marblehead and spent a couple hours walking through the town. I loved that the historical homes all have plaques next to the front door that state the name and occupation of the person whom the house was originally built for and also the year it was built. We also visited Crocker park which had great views of Marblehead Harbor.
The man at the rental car counter recommended that we drive down highway 1A for a "picturesque and scenic drive" back into Boston. That man was either smoking something funny or he had a great laugh at sending the tourists on a drive from hell. There was no "picturesque" unless you consider auto malls picturesque. In fact we only caught one glimpse of the water on the whole drive. Finally about an hour into the drive I turned on the GPS and got us on the quickest route back into town.
When we got back in we turned in the rental car and went up to our room to rest up a bit. Then we headed back to Joe's American to meet my friend Linda for dinner and to have some more back bay sangrias (YUM!). We spent a couple of hours visiting with Linda and enjoying our dinner and sangrias before we hopped on the subway to go to the north end. Debbi's favorite dessert is Boston cream pie and she insisted that we had to have it at least once before we left. So we went back to Mike's pastry and found that it is apparently THE place to be on a Friday night. The lines stretched into the street. While we were in line we had two women in front of us from Philly and we just kept laughing out loud at their conversations about what they were going to get, etc. They had the best Philly accents. So Debbi got her Boston cream pie and I opted for the carrot cake which was the best carrot cake I have ever had. We also found out that Mike's pastry ships anywhere in the U.S. this is dangerous information. I might have to get cannoli's shipped to CA. LOL!

Saturday we really did not have much time before our flights. We just packed up and had breakfast before checking out and taking the subway to the airport. It was a long trip home with lots of turbulents and rushed connections so it was so nice to get off the plane and see Scott and the kids waiting there for me. Scott even had a plate of lasagna at home for me along with french bread and a bottle of wine chilling. It was a nice way to end the day after 12 hours traveling and nothing to eat, but snacks that I had in my carry-on bag.