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Published: November 1st 2008
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.....or (ominous organ music....dunt dun dunnnn) Motel Hell.
But before that. We had our typical continental breakfast that was a little upper scale. They had hard boiled eggs. Whooooo!
After breakfast we stopped at the visitor's center at the Minuiteman Historical Site and walked along the path that the Minutemen took in fighting General Gage. "The Shot Heard Round the World". I was wondering how much of the actual battleground had changed since the actual battle. It is hard to tell.
We stopped in the small town of Concord and walked around for a little while and then decided to drive back to Salem (yes we are gluttons for punishment) and see some of the touristy stuff like the Witch Museum. So we braved the traffic again, parked and walked to the museum. The place is totally touristy and quite frankly creeped me out a bit. Seems like a trivial way to commemorate a not-so-nice part of our history and besides it was an hour before the next tour so we checked out the gift shop and left. I found a sun to add to my collection on the garage wall. What suns have to to with witches
escapes me but no matter, I needed a sun and I finally found one. We walked around Washington Square and admired the homes in the area, which are all on the historical registry and then decided to move on.
Cal wanted to visit the Gorton's Fishermen in Gloucester so we headed for there. It is America's oldest seaport, discovered in 1623 by an offshoot group of the Pilgrims three years after they landed at Plymouth, MA. It was a nice little fishing town with wonderful New England homes. We ended up at the Gloucester Fisherman's Memorial. It is an eight-foot tall, bronze statue of a fisherman dressed in oilskins standing braced at the wheel on the sloping deck of his ship. It is positioned so that the fisherman is looking out over Gloucester Harbor. He is facing about 10 metal plaques with the names of over 5000 fishermen lost at sea from 1623 until present day.
We drove around the area and stopped at Good Harbor Beach, a lovely sandy beach. There was a house out on the point that had to be millions of dollars and had a million dollar view. As a matter of fact, one
of the things I loved about this area were the homes and buildings. Very distinct to the area. We walked on the beach for a little while and then headed for a little restaurant for lunch. I had seafood chowder (of course) and then we headed to Danvers to our motel.
OK about that motel. We looked around for something near Logan Airport and for the mere sum of $300.00 + we could get a hotel near the airport, so last night I looked around the internet and found a Days Inn in Danvers. Danvers was about 30 minutes from Logan and the motel looked respectable and very inexpensive (there should have been a clue there) and it looked nice on the internet.
It looks perfectly respectable, right? Right. Clean, kind of New England-y, fairly new looking. So I booked it. We got there and OH. MY. GOD. It was green. Everything was either pea soup green or dark green and I do mean everything. Doorknobs were green, stairs where the carpet wasn't torn up were green and pretty much so was I. Cal, always the one to find the glass half full decided that it was just a dandy place and since we would have to pay for it if we stayed or not decided that was the place for us.
I kept telling myself that if I could stay alive for the next 12 hours it would be just fine. Unfortunately I hadn't read the reviews on Traveladvisor before I booked the room, otherwise I never would have. The drapes were shredded, the carpet so gnarley that I refused to take my shoes off, the wallpaper had red splotches as part of the design or it was blood spatter...I didn't want to look too close. There was a water mark about 6 inches up the wall...it was just icky.
Some of the Traveladvisor reviews sure cheered me up. One guy talked about bed bugs so sleeping wasn't going to happen. God it was awful.
We took a break from our lovely room and went across the street to an Applebees and had dinner.
When we got back we had neighbors! Among the other lovely amenities were the fact that the walls were paper thin! I bounced on the bed a little to give them something to talk about besides bitching at each
other and finally things quieted down. I also took solace in the fact that our alarm would be going off at 5:30 tomorrow morning and if we were awake they would be too. It was a long night with me fending off imaginary bed bugs.
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