Day 3 - Hyannis, Massachusetts
So, with a somewhat heavy heart we left Boston - as when we first visited Chicago, we felt that the city has so much for visitors to do and see that a day and half really only enabled us to scratch the surface of what the city (small by US standards with a population of approximately 600,000) has to offer. We have been blessed (so far) with glorious weather - although that may change mid-week as the remnants of Florence head north up the east coast - and again today it is dry, sunny and warm (mid 20s).
Our first stop is at Plymouth, Massachusetts, a coastal town south of Boston facing east out in to Cape Cod Bay and famous as being the place where the founding fathers, or pilgrims, first stepped in to the New World. Well, not quite as they had made land a month earlier on the tip of the Cape Cod peninsula, at what is now Provincetown (that we visit tomorrow), although the Plymouth Rock is touted as where the first tentative steps were made. Unlikely, or so it seems, but why let the truth get in the way of a good story, eh?
The legendary, some might say mythical, Plymouth Rock:
And, yes, that is a crack running through it - it split in two when it was moved to build the harbour!
So much for the gilded myths and legends of the undoubtedly hardy souls that spent 66 days sailing across the Atlantic searching for a brave new world - the fact is that, sadly, of the original 102 pilgrims only 51 made it through the first winter. The Pilgrim Hall Museum provides an insight in to how the survivors and those that joined them subsequently then set about falling out with each other and, of course, very successfully virtually wiping out the local native people, the Wampanoag with a combination of imported European viruses and illnesses not to mention physical aggression. It was hard not to leave the museum without a sense of shame at how we brought "civilisation" to what later became the USA.
From Plymouth we continued south through Sandwich, a remarkably picturesque village built around a mill pond and which clearly suffers from high levels of anti-social behaviour:
On then to our hotel for the next two nights the Hyannis Harbour Hotel that is a stone's throw from the monument in memory of John F Kennedy - the Kennedy family still has a "compound" (holiday estate) in Hyannis and another just over the water in Martha's Harbour - that overlooks the stunningly beautiful bay:
Dinner was taken at the Black Cat Tavern where Chris broke two recent habits of a lifetime and ate seafood (Grilled Shrimp Taco) washed down with a bottle of Whale's Tale Pale Ale (brewed in nearby Nantucket)!
And finally, a message from Miss Tracey:
Our first stop is at Plymouth, Massachusetts, a coastal town south of Boston facing east out in to Cape Cod Bay and famous as being the place where the founding fathers, or pilgrims, first stepped in to the New World. Well, not quite as they had made land a month earlier on the tip of the Cape Cod peninsula, at what is now Provincetown (that we visit tomorrow), although the Plymouth Rock is touted as where the first tentative steps were made. Unlikely, or so it seems, but why let the truth get in the way of a good story, eh?
The legendary, some might say mythical, Plymouth Rock:
And, yes, that is a crack running through it - it split in two when it was moved to build the harbour!
So much for the gilded myths and legends of the undoubtedly hardy souls that spent 66 days sailing across the Atlantic searching for a brave new world - the fact is that, sadly, of the original 102 pilgrims only 51 made it through the first winter. The Pilgrim Hall Museum provides an insight in to how the survivors and those that joined them subsequently then set about falling out with each other and, of course, very successfully virtually wiping out the local native people, the Wampanoag with a combination of imported European viruses and illnesses not to mention physical aggression. It was hard not to leave the museum without a sense of shame at how we brought "civilisation" to what later became the USA.
From Plymouth we continued south through Sandwich, a remarkably picturesque village built around a mill pond and which clearly suffers from high levels of anti-social behaviour:
On then to our hotel for the next two nights the Hyannis Harbour Hotel that is a stone's throw from the monument in memory of John F Kennedy - the Kennedy family still has a "compound" (holiday estate) in Hyannis and another just over the water in Martha's Harbour - that overlooks the stunningly beautiful bay:
Dinner was taken at the Black Cat Tavern where Chris broke two recent habits of a lifetime and ate seafood (Grilled Shrimp Taco) washed down with a bottle of Whale's Tale Pale Ale (brewed in nearby Nantucket)!
And finally, a message from Miss Tracey:
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