Day 37 - Spooky Sights of Salem!

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We're going to upload this blog from yesterday now but add the pictures later or tomorrow at some point. We are in New York now but the internet here is a bit questionable, so we will write/upload today's events later too . This is what we wrote yesterday but have only just had chance to upload:

Today, we woke up relatively early at around 8am, as we had planned a trip to the town of Salem. We put on some clothes and went down for breakfast before going back to the room to get ready properly. We checked online for the best/cheapest way to get to Salem, and noticed that there was a bus that went there from Haymarket station, which would be much cheaper than taking a train there.

After checking bus times, we set out at around 11am, heading to Back Bay station to catch the orange line to Haymarket station. Once there, we found the bus depot and found the stop for the 450 bus, which we knew wouldn't arrive until around 1pm, so we were a little early. However, we noticed that there was also a 455 bus that also went to Salem, and that bus would leave much earlier, at 12:15pm. We checked with a member of staff at the station on how much the fare would be, and he gave us a couple of 'Charlie' cards and said that the easiest and cheapest thing to do would be to load money onto them rather than paying the fare in cash, which would cost a little more. It would cost us $2.80 each way to Salem, so we went back into the station and loaded $6 onto our cards ready for our trip.

We went back outside and waited by the bus (which the guy had pointed out to us). The driver soon arrived and we got onboard, tapped our cards on the machine and found a seat. The journey to Salem took just over an hour, and we passed through some cute little towns on the way, all of which had huge houses, and many were decorated for Halloween already (we love how Americans dress up their houses for Halloween - we wish the UK would celebrate Halloween like they do!).

We arrived in Salem at around 1:20pm, and stayed on the bus until it reached the final destination, although realising after that we probably could have got off a little earlier and saved ourselves a short walk back into the town centre! We got off the bus and headed back in the direction of the town, noticing a familiar red line along the pavement, similar to the one that we had followed the previous day on the 'Freedom Trail'. We decided to follow the line, assuming that it would be some sort of tourist trail for Salem, and it eventually lead us to the start of a more pedestrianised high street, at the top of which stood a little information booth.

We walked over to the information booth to pick up a map, which we received from a guy who we assume was some sort of volunteer. He asked us if we needed any information, and we politely said that we would just like a map, so he pulled one out and went through all of the different points of interest with us anyway! Once he was done with his little talk, we received our map and we set off down the street.

As we walked, we noticed that every single shop was themed around witches/magic/the devil etc - we had basically entered halloweenland! There were various little museums, 'haunted houses' (basically scare mazes), and lots of quirky little shops selling all things to do with witchcraft. We walked into one of the shops which claimed to be the place "where Harry Potter never ends" (or something like that), and found that it was full of all sorts of Harry Potter memorabilia, such as scarves from all of the different Hogwarts houses, the wands of the different characters, figerines, Quidditch balls, bats and goggles, stuffed owls, hats, even the school books that the characters study such as "The Book of Wizardry: Volume I", etc. Emma, being a huge Harry Potter fan since the first book came out, fangeeked out for a while, taking some pictures of the stuff in the shop while Craig just followed her around.

We left the shop and decided to find somewhere to eat. We noticed a sign for a mall, so we went inside, assuming that there would be some restaurants inside. The 'witchy' theme continued in there, with a photo studio where people could dress up as witches and have their photos taken in various scenes, more shops selling random halloween-themed items, and also a psychic fayre in a large room in the centre of the mall. We eventually found a relatively normal-looking place to eat, called N.Y. Pizza and Deli, so we browsed the menu outside, which seemed very reasonable. Craig went for spaghetti and meatballs, whilst Emma had chilli with rice. We both enjoyed our 'home-cooked' meals, during which, Satan walked through the door - literally a guy dressed as the devil painted red who we think worked at one of the nearby scare mazes - which, neverless was a little unnerving! Once we were done, we left the mall to find the visitor centre, which was just a little further down the high street.

Once there, we had a quick look through the various leaflets for the different attractions, before deciding to just follow the map/red line around the historical points of interest surrounding the Salem Witch trials. We went first to the Salem Common (similar to the Boston Common but much smaller!), where we sat on a bench for a while in the sun. We then followed our map towards the old burial ground, noticing a sign for the Salem Witch Trials Memorial pointing in the direction that we were heading. We reached the graveyard, and next to it stood the memorial, which was a quiet, walled-off area, with grass/trees running through the middle and 20 inset benches along the walls, in commemmoration of each of the innocent victims that were found guilty and executed (and the one guy that was pressed to death with stones to try to force him to confess to witchcraft) during the witch trials in the late 17th century. We took a few pictures of the benches and of the graveyard behind (which was similar to the old ones in Boston, filled with very old gravestones and tombs), before continuing along the red line towards the old town hall.

As we got closer, we could see that there was some sort of little farmer's market on. We had a quick look through some of the stalls and took a picture of the town hall that stood behind it. We then passed through back onto the high street, where we went into the strangest little book shop that we have ever been in! The place was LITERALLY full to the brim with books piled on top of each other! It was just like one of those little book shops that you see on the films where you might find some sort of old spellbook hidden at the back somewhere! You could just about see the guy on the till in between two big piles of books, it was just crazy!

We left the shop and walked up the street a bit further, where we spotted a chocolate shop. We had a look inside and saw some chocolate lollies shaped like pumpkins, so we had one each. We sat on a bench outside and ate our pumpkins, noticing that many of the locals actually looked like they were probably into witchcraft/Wicca/Paganism, especially after hearing a couple of them discuss the others psychic readings.

By this point, it was about 4:30pm, and we knew that we needed to get back to Boston fairly soon to pack up and get an early night so that we would be up for our early bus to New York in the morning. We headed back to the bus station - on the way getting a quick snap of the 'Bewitched' statue at the top of the high street - where we caught the 4:50pm bus back to Boston.

The ride back took a bit longer - probably just over 2 hours by the time we got back - due to traffic from schools in the towns around Salem, followed by loads of traffic in Boston due to a big hockey game that was taking place that evening. We got back to Haymarket station and caught the orange line back to our hostel. We stopped off at CVS, where Craig grabbed a chicken noodle soup and Emma had some gummy bears to snack on as she didn't really wany any tea. We got back to the hostel, where we packed up our stuff and had showers before going to bed relatively early at 10pm, ready for our 7am Megabus to New York in the morning.

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