Day Four of Foxboro MA Historical Tour

Thursday Sept 18:
This was a 11 hour day bus tour of Boston, MA, with a tour guide that new the city like a book, but guess that is his job. Scott was his name and he gave us very important information about the rules in Boston. You do not purnounce your R's in words unless it begins with R. When you step out in a cross walk don't depend on the drivers to stop there are two types of people the quick and the dead. You are considered red meat for dinner if they hit you.

There are 100 Dunkin Donut shops there corporate offices reside in Boston and only 50 Starbucks. Barb would ask Teresa her daughter do you think that is fare? She would say NO!

In MA their are 100 colleges and 50 are in Boston. Rent is very high it cost $1600.00 a month for 500 Square Feet. One third of the people who live there does not own a car because there is no place to park them. 13 Million residents use the subway for transportation. The parking is on the street or you pay big money to try and get one in a parking garage close to where you live.

This picture is houses yes, your house is virtical it is 4 story this building is several homes and they are side by side and this complex could be a block or two long. So you understand the parking complexity and the streets are two way but only room for one car at a time.

The tour was called Boston's Freedom Trail which is a 2 1/2 mile walk or ride that covers 20 of Bostons historic points or landmarks, we saw Bunker Hill & Beacon Hill, The OLD NORTH CHURCH, the USS Constitution & Museum, Harvard college, & Quency Market. The Church, the USS constitution, Harvard, and Quency Mkt was the places we got off the bus and spent time.

This picture is of a early century Epispical Church and it was interesting to see several students sitting on the ground drawing pictures of this church. They more than likely was going to a college and it was part of their assignment. This is the 9th most beutiful church in the US.

This picture is Harvard University, we stood on the lawn of the main campus in front of the library. The guide told us 1 in 10 students get accepted that apply. 24,000 applied this year as freshman and only 1640 got accepted. The criteria is based on straight A grades, acedemics, community involvement, the application Essay, and the WASAL test scores are last. If you are from a wealthy known family you may have some advantage. The guide said even valvictorians was rejected and having a perfect criteria base is no guarantee you can get accepted. 98 % of the students graduate in 4 years, 2% graduate in 5 years. We shopped and ate lunch in the Harvard University area.

Another big college in Boston is MIT (MA Intitute of Technology), very strick school, high intensity of discipline, very hard to get accepted to because of the volume, it has a higher rate of suicides than some other colleges. You do nothing but study at this college 24 /7.

This market is a big open market some stores in buildings and some on the street. Very large
area we spent a hour and half and had dinner there but it was at the end of our day so did not do much shopping but we could all go back to our home state and say we had been there. We understand if you go to Boston you will be asked that question.

This picture is a sky line view of Boston from accross the harbour.

This is a picture of the harbor from the same place the skyline picture was taken from.

This picture is bunker hill a impressive granite monument, 221 feet high and marks the location of the Battle of Bunker Hill fought on June 17th 1775.

The picture above this picture is the entrance to the Old North Church this old colonial church dating from 1723 was the highest pooint on the skyline of Boston when the night of April 18, 1775 two lanterns were hung in the steeple. These lanterns was a signal to Paul Revere how the Redcoats were advancing on Lexington and Concord either by land or sea. One lantern lit was by land if two lit it was by sea.

This is a picture of the steeple where the lanterns were placed by the janitor that night.

They had room for 300 + of us tourist was ushered into this church and listened to a speaker on the history of the church. There is still church services every sunday in this church. The picture above is of the organ that you see is on the upper level of this building. Notice the 4 angels on the posts in front of the organ. They come from England. The clock was built by the sea captains. Notice where we all sat in boxes of 4 that is the way it was in the early days and that was because there was no heat in this building. But little heaters sat in each window (as you can see in the far window accross the way the black square object) with small boxes like this people stayed warm from each other sitting so close a confined space.
This picture was of a box of a sea captain that started the chuch and gave a large sum of money so if you did that you could decorate your box any way you wished.

This picture is of the USS Constitution and then there was a Museum also. We toured this ship.

Wow only with help of the Souvenir Guide books could Barb & Jerry pull all this information out of their brain. We have some great reference material for our grand children to read and do papers for their school history classes.

I took 43 pictures with the Camera that Teresa and Steve gave me for Mothers day and I love that camera it is so small and compact and easy to have in my purse THANK YOU SO MUCH.

Jerry took more than I did with his camera which is the big digital camera which he likes.