Boston-ish area


Advertisement
United States' flag
North America » United States » Massachusetts » Boston
October 31st 2016
Published: November 2nd 2016
Edit Blog Post

It always feels like we are doing a drive by of Boston during one of the last weekends in October. It isn't our main agenda but we are "so close" we feel the need to stop there. Well this past weekend was no different. When one of my beautiful amazing Peace Corps gals invited us to a shin dig to celebrate her marriage up in Newburyport, MA we made a jam packed weekend out of it.

It has become our M.O. to not bother planning anything. I don't know how wise that it but it seems to be working out (if you don't mind sleeping in the occasional car now and again). Once again we made no real plans until Friday morning when we decide what the hey, why not start our journey today. So after work we through our bags in the car, put out bowls of cat food and hit the road.

Our destination for Day One was New Haven, Connecticut. Home to Yale University our main goal for visiting was to catch Pokemon. Yes that is correct, our obsession which hasn't wavered from the beginning of the Pokemon Go phenomena drives our vacation goals to where there are rare pokemon or pokestops. I know, I know you are probably laughing out loud reading about two nearly 30 year olds who are slightly obsessed with imaginary monsters, but the Pokemon Go thing has gotten us to parks we didn't even know existed, they encouraged us to stop in Geneva, Switzerland and provide serious basically free entertainment primarily outdoors #winning.

Anyway I digress a little to defend my position of playing a kids game. New Haven also held another leading claim that persuaded us to make that our pit stop: Louie's Lunch. Now I'm not much of a fast food person (although I'm warming up to the fact that a quick meal no cheap prices can beat a 3 hour meal of mediocre food for 3xs the amount) and I'm not a huge fan of burgers but when we saw Louie's Lunch pop up a one of the Top 5 Burgers in America just this past weekend we decided to make that our dinner spot.

Louie's Lunch is kind of adorable. The small red brick building sits on Crown Street just a few minutes walking distance from our hotel The Omini. It doesn't just hold the claim of being one of the best burgers in the USA but also the first burger although others may dispute that. Seeing the size we were fearful it was going to be jam packed but much to our delight there were few people already in there. We grabbed the last table, ordered our cheeseburgers with the works and waited. In the mean time, we also received old timey looking soda and potato salad. Folks were chatting about life in high school and who is in the hall of fame. Everyone was calling the one guy Uncle and the atmosphere itself was really cool. On top of that their burgers are broiled in the original antique cast iron stoves from 1898. They are unique in the aspect that they are vertical and hold the meat in place as they cook. Their cooking utensils aren't the only thing unique, the burger is served on toasted white bread with lettuce and tomatoes and that is it. Don't think about asking for ketchup, there are actually signs with ketchup bottles and lines through it! Poor Derik. The burger was good, nothing stupendous but the experience was worth it because the atmosphere was just great.

After filling up on our burger on bread we headed back out into the cold air to roam around. We were mainly searching for Pokemon but the town is in a cute area and the architecture is beautiful. New Haven doesn't just hold foodie history with claims to the first burger but it is also full of other first such as the first planned city in America (disputed), the first steamboat and the first submarine alone with a slew of other great historic facts. We were more interested in the Pokemon than the history but it was still an adorable town. After an hour of walking through town we headed back to the Omni and called it a night

The next day we hit up The Pantry for breakfast before taking off for Newburport, MA. The Pantry was just a few minute drive from our hotel and we got there just before the mad rush seemed to happen. Another adorable place, we both ordered egg benedict and split a cinnamon twist pancake. I had heard that The Pantry was known for its cinnamon twist pancake and oh man was it delicious! We ordered one and that was all you needed, I could only imagine getting a whole stack!

After filling up on a delicious breakfast we headed out. We may have diverted one to many times because we ended up arriving in Newburyport an hour late, but we couldn't help ourselves. I mean when your driving along the highway and you see a sign that says Dinosaur State Park what are you suppose to do? Well the answer is naturally turn around, track the park down and check it out!

Seriously it was so random of a place to stumble along and my absolute love of Jurassic Park made me insist that we stop. So we did just that. There is a cool geodesic dome that covers more that 500 tracks made by the beautiful but deadly addition to Jurassic Park, Dilophosaurus or at least it is presumed to have been made by that species. These foot prints aren't recreations and they haven't been uprooted from somewhere else, instead they were found during construction and eventually designated a Natural Landmark. After several make shift domes where blown down or destroyed, a permanent one was created to preserve the integrity of the site. It is most definitely worth a stop, and once done exploring the little environmental center there are trails all around it to go for a nice walk on.

We continued on to our second pit stop, Riverside Park. It is a lovely little park with a trail that takes you down Sculpture Path. There different sculptures are on display along side the Connecticut River. There wasn't much to do, just a nice place to walk along the water on a beautiful day. A nice pit stop halfway to our destination, but once again we lingered to long and had to book it the rest of the way.

Sure we left with plenty of time, that is if no traffic occurred and a torrential downpour didn't take place. But both of those things found it every so fitting to occur on the last hour of our trip. It slowed us up, but we eventually made it to our destination, the Inn on Main Street. The cute thing about this is, we booked our room and once you have done that, they just leave the key taped to the door. That is correct, the leave the key to the whole Inn taped on the front door. I guess we are in a very safe area which is nice to know since we will be walking to my friends place.

Her shin dig was lovely. It is amazing to see old friends you haven't seen in years. When hosting a party it is hard to be able to split up your time between everyone, but just seeing her was wonderful enough even if we didn't get all the time in the world to reminisce.

The following day we grabbed breakfast at Mad Martha's up on Plum Island, just a few minutes away from our Inn. It was an adorable little place with good food right on off the beach. We grabbed food (banana French toast YUM!) and then ran up to the beach which had the most beautiful sunrise that morning. And then we hit the road once more.

With Salem literally being on our way home, we decided to hit it up. We had heard how crazy it was esepcailly on Halloween weekend, but we figured we were going nice and early so might as well give it a shot. We parked in the public parking garage for $5.00 which absolutely beats the $20.00 they were charging just down the road and walked around the town. It was the most beautiful day, seriously we didn't even need jackets.

Our first stop was the Witches Dungeon. They put on a little skit about Goody Proctors trial and how she tried to defend herself but it is hard to do so when the evidence against you is spectral evidence (the one accusing you is the only one who can see it). From there we got to go to the dungeon. It is an exact replication of what the dungeon would have looked like, the real dungeon having been destroyed when Salem wanted to keep the whole witch trial thing hush hush. It is disturbing to realize how many people where kept down there, worse to learn that some where placed in coffin rooms where you literally couldn't lay down because they were the size of a coffin standing up, and most appalling to learn was that while in the dungeon you still had to pay for your food. Now how are you suppose to pay for anything if you aren't working because your locked up in jail. Naturally people died of starvation and then were left in the dungeons because guess what, you had to pay to have your body removed as well. Crazy is all I can say.

From there we moved on to John Corwin's house, he is the judge that presided over these trails. It is also known as the Witch House although nothing witchy ever went on there. However we did learn how the witch trails ended. It wasn't until the Governor's own wife was accused that the Governor said maybe we should stop this whole witch hunt and spectral evidence probably isn't real evidence. It is a really cool house, kept to look like it would back when Corwin lived there/

The Gallow Hills was our next stop, seeing the dungeon and the judges house we decided to wrap it up with where the hangings occurred. However when we got there and saw a playground there with no memorial we started to suspect we were in the wrong spot. Google informed us that nobody actually knows where the hangings occurred, but more than likely it wasn't at Gallow's Hill. Surprise! Well it was a nice walk anyway.

We headed back into the main part of town to grab a bit to eat. By this time the roads were swarming with folks, most dressed up, and the restaurants were packed to the gills. Instead of sitting down inside, we grabbed a sausage and pepper hoagie and sat right in front of Nathaniel Hawthorne's statue. After a not so delicious lunch, we decided to move on from Salem. Most places now had lines for days and we still had a four hour ride home to accomplish.

Our next stop was just outside of Boston at Esplanada Park. Can you guess what we were doing there? Take a wild stab in the dark. Did you say Pokemon? Well you are correct. We made another pit stop just to search for Pokemon, and appreciate the beautiful weather we were getting at the end of October! We walked around the park for awhile before we felt some raindrops. That was our cue to hit the road and head on out.

Always on the move, we made it home in time to see the end of the Cleveland/Chicago game. Our trip, as the usually are, was a whirlwind which suits us just fine. I'd love to actually spend one FULL day in Boston, or go crazy and stay a whole weekend! But I'm still loving these drive bys that we do, exploring a little bit at a time. Maybe we'll be back here next year!


Additional photos below
Photos: 25, Displayed: 25


Advertisement



Tot: 0.081s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 12; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0563s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1; ; mem: 1.1mb