Revolutionary War battlegrounds and Plymouth - Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Happy Bastille Day! We checked out of the Sheraton this morning. It was bittersweet as we loved the hotel and had a great time in Boston. However, we also wanted to continue traveling and learning about new places. I would love to live in Boston. I don't know why I didn't feel that way when I had the opportunity to move here eight years ago. When we came for the look and see trip it was winter and we didn't really look in the city. We looked mostly in the suburbs. It was super depressing. I remember telling Al, I would move only if we could live in the city. Then we had the opportunity to go to Nice, France which we both preferred, so we discarded the idea of living in Boston. I wouldn't mind doing it now.
We drove out through Cambridge to Lexington-Concorde. Our friend Melanie (the one from we visited in Arlington, Virginia) grew up in Lexington. It's a beautiful place. We visited the Minutemen National Park and learned about the battles leading up to and at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. We saw an interesting movie at the center, which reenacted the battles and from the perspective of a colonist. Later, we drove on what used to be Bay Road, which was the battle road and went to North Bridge. There we heard a Park Ranger retell the story. This was a very enjoyable and educational addition to our trip.
We had lunch/dinner at 4:30 p.m, at Neillio's Gourmet Kitchen Deli. We bought a turkey BLT, stuffing and cranberries, breaded chicken cutlet with mashed potatoes and mac-n-cheese. We drove off eating and happy we found the place. We continued our drive to Melanie's dad's house in Plymouth, MA. We arrived and it was amazing. The drive up to the house on their driveway is about 1.5 miles long. It is a heavily wooded area and the house is very nice. It's a two story house plus an attic from what I could tell. It had an adorable swing hanging in the back porch and gorgeous view of the ocean. As you get closer to the edge of the yard, you realize there is a huge drop to the sand and water. This house and all the others in the area, sit on a cliff, about 200 feet from the ocean. It is very steep and the kids wanted to climb down! It reminded me the mountain in New Zealand (actually volcano) that we did scree-running as it was scary.
Anyway, Melanie's dad buried an emergency key in their flower bed over one year ago. He told Al the location and said it shouldn't be too difficult. An hour later after speaking to Melanie, Melanie's mom and Dad and David, neither Alex nor I could find the key. Melanie's parents offered to bring us the key, but we refused as it would be a 2.5 hour trip for us or for them to get the key and get back. We thanked them for their gracious and generous gesture, but decided to just go to Plymouth and stay at a hotel as it was already getting dark. We looked for a hotel and found many "cheesy" hotels and motels, which I wouldn't stay at. On my GPS, I located a Hilton Garden Inn, with no availability and a Radisson across from the harbor about 1/2 block from Plymouth Rock. They had a room and we went. We ended up changing rooms three times that night. First, the room smelled like mold, so I started coughing. The second room overlooked an atrium with an indoor pool so the smell of chlorine was so strong I couldn't breathe. Finally, we found a third room with no unusual smells or allergens.
We went back to the hotel and did research to try to figure out what to do next. We went to bed around 3:00 a.m.
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