Boston, Day 2

Mmmmm....authentic Italian pastries EVERY morning when you stay in the North End :) Steve made it a point to stop at a pastry shop every morning for our mid-morning snack. Here's one that was a suggestion to us. Very tasty.

We took our first family subway trip this morning to avoid a long walk to the Boston Common. The kids thought it was quite cool, as you can see. At the Boston Common ( a large park), we read about a Frog Pond for kids. Basically, a big cement pool, only 6 inches deep, and FREE! Since it was a nice, sunny, HOT day, we gladly spent a few hours here! The kids loved it. A playground was nearby and it also had sprinklers to play in.



After cooling off at the Frog Pond, we hopped on over to the visitor center where the Freedom Trail tours begin. We joined a Lobsterback and he gave us a good tour of some of the hot spots on the Freedom Trail. The kids were tired, but hung on for the hour and a half tour. Zeke seemed to enjoy it and could connect with some of the places and people we saw since we studied early American history last year. Here's Paul Revere's tomb...the one before the Longfellow poem was written...afterwards, he got a bigger, better tombstone!


After the tour, and since it was on our way back to our condo, we stopped and toured Paul Revere's house. This was not included in the Freedom Trail tour, but I'm glad we made the extra stop! We then headed home for a quick bite to eat and then retrieved our car from a the lot (our parking story is a whole post in itself...one person in Boston decided to be kind to us...and it was the parking attendant at a lot a few blocks away from the condo...Praise God!). Anyways...we had to make it over to the children's museum which has $1 admissions on Friday night. You can do the math... 6 * $1= $6 = cheap family fun!!! And the kids had a blast!



A braille typewriter, which was daddy's favorite!



A very scary climbing contraption that mommy could not watch.


Eli weaving.



Abby's spatial abilities.



I hope you're Peep fans like us!!!

Boston, Day 1

We had 12 days of vacation in August and it was AWESOME!!!! We began our adventure at 6:30 am on Wednesday and drove straight through to Boston, arriving at 9pm. The kids did an amazing job traveling in the car all day long. This is a picture of the outside of our condo. We stayed in Boston's North End, the Italian district. We were a block away from the Old North church, a million great Italian restaurants (which we unfortunately never got to sample...even one!), the Freedom Trail, Mike's Pastry shop. An amazing location, for sure!

After settling in the first night, we lounged around the next morning and finally decided to head to the New England Aquarium since it was a bit drizzly and cool. I would NOT suggest visiting this aquarium in the middle of August. It was SO crowded! Very difficult to move around and see the exhibits. But all in all, it was OK. We saw an IMAX, some seals, penguins, a huge sea turtle, lots of jellyfish....



After the aquarium, we strolled back to the condo and ended up ordering a pizza from one of the many pizzerias in the North End. We picked it up, avoiding a very long line, and headed to the North End park, where we had a picnic overlooking the Harbor/Charles River. We watched a couple local softball games, helped fish a softball out of the river, played basketball, climbed on the play structure. A great way to end our first day in Boston!