Beantown!

Jill's Journal: Boston. Wonderful, vibrant, historic, glorious Boston.

The Boston Tea Party. Harvard. Fenway Park. Boston Cream Pie. The Boston Massacre. The Celtics. Boston Baked Beans. Beacon Hill. The Kennedys. Boston Red Sox. MIT. Boston Harbor. Samuel Adams (the beer and the patriot). Boston Pops. The Cradle of Liberty. Boston Marathon. Cheers.

As the unofficial capital of New England, Boston’s contributions to the entire country are countless. It is a marvelous, proud, dynamic place. I love it, absolutely and completely love it.

During a visit to Boston in 1996, I thought then it just might be my favorite major city in the U.S. Today confirmed it. What a marvelous place, with the exquisite mixture of a tremendous past and a bustling present. It just has such a great feel to it.

As much as I’d like to spend countless hours exploring Boston, we have to consider our audience and it just isn’t possible with such young kids. So, we picked what we thought might work best -- the Freedom Trail, a self-guided walking tour of historically important downtown sites. The three mile trail (not counting the return walk!) is marked with red bricks or red paint, just like the yellow brick road in The Wizard of Oz. I’ll just share some of the highlights.

We started in Boston Common, America’s oldest park. The land was set aside for public use in 1634. Criminals were hanged here, Boston’s militia trained here, America’s first subway was built underneath here, Amelia Bloomer campaigned for women’s rights in 1851 here (while wearing her shocking “bloomers”), and everyone from George Washington to Martin Luther King Jr. to Pope John Paul II have spoken to massive crowds here.

The Park Street Church: in 1829, the hymn America was first sung here on these steps.





The Old Granary Burying Ground; what an amazing, surreal place. It’s tiny, but graves include those of Paul Revere, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Benjamin Franklin’s parents, in addition to the victims of the Boston Massacre.

Also buried here is Mary Goose, also called Elizabeth Vergoose, and best known as Mother Goose. Her son-in-law published her work after her death in 1757. She was the mother and stepmother of 20 children.





The Omni Parker House, an 1855 hotel, pioneered the dinner accompaniment the world knows as Parker House rolls. Two extreme figures served them to guests as waiters here in the 1900s: Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh.




The 1713 Old State House, the seat of Britain’s Colonial government and where the despised Stamp Act was debated with great fire. See that balcony in front (at the left of the photo)? On July 18, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was first read to Bostonians from that balcony. Two hundred years later, Queen Elizabeth II spoke from the same balcony to celebrate America’s independence! It was also in front of this building that five civilian colonists were killed by British soldiers in 1770, an event that helped spur the Revolution and became known as the Boston Massacre.

World-famous Faneuil Hall (Faneuil rhymes with “Daniel”), Boston’s marketplace since 1742. Even today it’s packed with merchants and food venders and a gazillion people. It’s known for free enterprise on the first floor and free speech on the second floor, which is affectionately called the “Cradle of Liberty.” Samuel Adams (and other patriots) stirred up fiery rebellion here in 1772 and controversy has continued over the centuries: everything from slavery to alcohol to women’s rights to the Vietnam War have famously been debated here.

It was a hot day and the girls enjoyed a break with some ice cream on the back steps of Faneuil Hall across from the also historic Quincy Market (built in 1824 when merchant demand outgrew the space available in Faneuil Hall). It’s pretty awesome to think of the patriots who might have enjoyed a cool treat on a hot day on the exact same steps.

Rob and I had a treat too – beans, of all things. It sounds like a silly thing to try on a warm day, but Boston is called “Beantown” because it is the original home of real baked beans. Puritan housewives were not allowed to cook on the Sabbath, so they traditionally prepared white haricot beans, ham hocks, and molasses the day before and stewed them slowly in a big pot to eat after worship. Durgin-Park at Faneuil Hall is a legendary Boston restaurant –over 180 years old– which is known for its baked beans done the old-fashioned Boston way, with molasses in stone crocks. We had to try them and they were delicious. The canned version will never compare.

Haymarket is not far from Faneuil Hall. This giant Farmer’s Market has hosted fruit and vegetable venders for 300 years (and generations of these vendors are still going strong)!



The British are coming! Paul Revere’s house. He was a talented silversmith, bell-maker, and engraver, but he’s endured through history because of his midnight ride. On the night of April 18, 1775, he slipped out of Boston on a rowboat, borrowed a horse in Charlestown, and rode madly to Lexington to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock that British troops were advancing with plans to arrest them. His wooden home, which was built in 1680 and he bought in 1770, also happens to be the oldest surviving home in Boston. After Revere sold the house in 1800, after owning it for 30 years, it became a tenement and it is said hundreds of immigrant families lived in it for the next 100 years. In 1902, Revere’s great-grandson bought the building and restored it back to its original state. It has been preserved as Revere’s home and museum for over a century now. Ninety percent of the structure is still original.

“One if by land, and two if by sea.” Probably the most fascinating thing we saw today was the Old North Church. It was on this 191-foot steeple that sexton Robert Newman hung lanterns to warn patriots across the Charles River of British troop movements. The steeple was the tallest thing in Boston until the 1800s and can still be seen from many parts of the city. The Old North Church is also the oldest church in Boston (1723) and is still an active congregation. In the old days, families rented their pews from the church and could decorate their box at will. Stepping into the church is like stepping back in time. History positively drips from the walls.

One of the major early battles of the Revolution was the Battle of Bunker Hill, right within walking distance of downtown Boston. The colonists rallied to the cry, “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes!” The site is now marked by a massive stone obelisk. The British technically won the battle when the colonists ran out of ammunition, but the colonist causalities were far less than the British and the battle proved the inexperienced colonists were willing to give their lives against the fearsome Redcoats. George Washington, who was on his way to Boston as the new commander of the Continental Army, gleaned hope from the conflict that his army had the heart, if not the numbers or the experience, to prevail.

It was an unseasonably warm day and unfortunately (but understandably), the girls lost interest in all the history and sights. They were far more focused on the promise of hitting the playground at Boston Common at the day’s end. They won’t appreciate for years yet what they missed, but at these ages, sometimes you just have to go with the flow. So, we headed back to the Common for some playground time and then to the adjacent Boston Public Garden, a gorgeous 1837 park. The duck sculptures are the characters from the book “Make Way for Ducklings,” a book by one of our favorite children’s authors, Robert McCloskey, in which “Mrs. Mallard” shepherds her ducklings from the Charles River to the pond at the Public Garden, stopping Boston traffic along the way.

Across the street from the Public Garden is the old Bull & Finch Pub, made famous as the setting for the beloved TV show Cheers. Remember the characters going down stairs to get inside the bar? It really is on the lower level. We didn’t go in with little kids, but apparently everybody knows your name!

One side note: our darling Madelyn, whom I thought was a country girl through and through, turns out to be a big city girl at heart. She was hilarious. It was like walking around with a celebrity. I don’t know how many people she high-fived and said hello to, but it was in the dozens. I’ve never laughed so much in a major city as I did watching her charm the pants off everyone around her, no matter where we went. She had everyone from homeless men on the ground to tourists with cameras to businessmen in suits smiling and saying hello or waving to her. And she ate it all up, just completely in her element. She’s certainly never met a stranger and after today, half of Boston knows her!