Exploring Salem

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Have I mentioned before how much I love that Salem is literally a fifteen minute drive away? It's awesome! So today our big plan was to explore as much of Salem as possible. Unfortunately, Chris woke up with a migraine, and he was out. So he stayed at the house to pound meds and sleep it off while the rest of us went on our daytrip. I took the baby with me. Thankfully I had my brothers to help keep an eye on her.

Our first stop was the Nathaniel Hawthorne House of Seven Gables. The only Hawthorne book I've actually read is Scarlet Letter (which I loved back in high school) but I was interested in seeing the house anyway, which was inspiration for one of his other works. We paid for our guided tour, and just as we sat down in the first room to listen to our guide, Arya decided sitting down wasn't her thing. Also she wanted to eat. And she wasn't quiet with her demands. We made it all of two minutes before we were in full blown tantrum over no crackers in the museum. Our guide looked super annoyed so I walked out with Arya. David followed for some reason, and the guide informed us that we would not be allowed back on the same tour so we should head back to the front desk to get a refund. Or take a later tour. Sigh. Lesson learned- toddlers hate small group tours. What's funny is Galen and Carleigh were both still on the tour, and neither of them have read Hawthorne. Only David and I! Anyway, we got our refunds, downloaded an app for an audio tour (which a helpful employee suggested) and walked the grounds outside the house ourselves. It was a beautiful day outside! Eventually, Galen and Carleigh finished their tour and met us back inside. We were explaining to them about our refund after being booted from the tour, and apparently an employee overheard us. We hadn't made any fuss over it- it is what it is. But the employee felt terrible and offered to have the same guide take us on a free mini-tour of the same house! Hell yeah. Galen and Carleigh watched Arya while we sped through the old house. I absolutely love the interior design. The second building was a museum with some of Hawthorne's other writings, including love letters between him and his wife.

After our tour, we grabbed lunch at a cheap, not so great place back in the main part of town. Food wasn't terrible, just not memorable. Then, we walked over for our second attempt at a tour that day- the Salem Witch Museum. I had been here once as a child with my mom many years ago. Like, literally 20-something years ago. Hasn't changed a bit! Okay, maybe a little. The main "show" of mannequins with dramatization, lighting and story was exactly as I remembered it but there was also a second small guided tour where they explained what it means to be a witch, both historically, in the media and modern day. I was shocked as hell when Arya sat PERFECTLY through the entire show with the mannequins, and then quietly let us hold her as she drifted off to sleep during the guided tour.

We all greatly needed coffee at this point, so we walked over to the nearby Gulu-Gulu cafe. Cold brews and cookies, ftw! We also stopped to take pictures with the Bewitched statue! We thought this cafe was really neat and decided to come back later that evening on our crawl. They have tons of tables, board games and serve coffee, alcohol AND food! One of the waitresses saw Arya and brought her over a toy tiger to play with (super sweet).

Through texting we found out Chris was starting to feel better from his migraine. He was atleast out of bed and bumming around the house now. He still wasn't up for doing anything outside of the house, so he agreed to watch Arya while the rest of us went out on a bar crawl that night. In the meanwhile, we had to complete a quest for him (since it was his last full day here)- find legit Boston Cream Pie. You wouldn't believe HOW HARD it is to find. I called multiple bakeries, "Do you sell Boston Cream Pie?" Girl on phone of final bakery, "It's a CAKE." Me, inwardly sighing, and then replying, "Yes. I know." They must get that a lot... BUT, they did in fact sell one, and we drove two tiny towns over from Salem just to procure it. This cake was HUGE and very very good.

That night, David, Galen, Carleigh and I caught an uber ride and hit up Salem night life, which is to say quietly drinking in as many bars as possible. David had tried to send us off to a dive bar right off the bat Thankfully our uber driver intervened, stating it was a great place to get fresh crack and heroin. We all agreed we were too sober for that, and walked around until we saw the next most divey bar in Salem. We were stared at by the locals (like why are we here?) as we drank and played pool. I've become impressively crappy at pool over the years, I realized. Bar #2 was O'Neills, the Irish pub that was way too packed to get into on St. Paddy's day. That night they had live music, we ordered a local beer (which I still can't pronounce), and Galen ordered full on bangers 'n mash while I had myself some loaded tots. It doesn't take me much to get drunk these days, and this year I've been drinking less and less mixed drinks (no shots of liquor at all). I had to keep reassuring my siblings I was getting drunk just fine on beer. Haha. We wandered down the street to our next stop... the fairly unmarked door in the alley with the pretty lights we saw a couple days before. We wanted to explore the bar downstairs. It was totally worth it. They were playing some old terrible slasher film on a large screen, and David and I settled down to some old fashioned jenga. Bar #4 brought us back to Gulu-Gulu cafe, which was darker and lit with tiny candles. Around this time Galen got cranky and stomped off, Carleigh walking off after him. That left David and I to awkwardly, and drunkenly, head off to our final bar, the dive David originally tried to take us to at the beginning of the evening. I'd like to point out that even though we were both drunk, we were in no way rowdy or even noisy. It was just the two of us. So imagine our surprise when the bartender refused us service. He told us we had out of state licenses and "the exit's to the left." We were so confused. Why would we be refused service for that? Incredibly insulted, we just walked out rather than make a scene, which I felt would only fuel his refusal. I later read that some bars in Massachusetts have been doing this because out of state licenses vary so widely state to state, it's difficult to tell what's real and what's fake. Also, this was probably a locals only bar. Shrug- jerks. So, we found Galen and Carleigh, and hopped an uber home for the night.

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Salem
Glad your tour worked out. That is great. A town full of history and mystery.