So the main goal of this trip was to see the patriotic sights of Boston and most of those are on the Freedom Trail. We got up at 6am with bad backs from the rock hard bed. The breakfast buffet at the Hampton was pretty good, 7 out of 10. I had a waffle, a little cheese omelet, and some sausage, great stuff. We got an Uber out to the Boston Common where our free national parks guide app said it started. We killed a few minutes at the info center and then started walking and listening to the audio guide. We had a good pace and took tons of pictures. Then we went pretty far off the rails from normal walking tours and took an hour tour of the State House where the governor works. The tour guide was some sleepy college kid, but it was an impressive building. Beautiful stained glass all around. We got to see the senator and rep houses meet in their big rooms.
Next was the church, but it was closed so we just passed by to the burial ground. Very cool old graves of founding fathers like Hancock, Adam’s, and Revere. Not fancy but very historic folks.
We kept walking to the Kings church and its burial yard to see more graves. The church cost money so we passed on seeing inside. Next was just a sidewalk marker where the first school was. Also saw the old city hall that is now businesses and Ruth’s Chris.
We totally skipped a real lunch and ate a banana from the hotel breakfast, ironically at the Irish Famine memorial. The bookstore is now a Chipotle, so that’s sad. We initially just saw and walked by the Old South Meeting Hall since it had an admission charge and didn’t look too impressive. We just moved on to the Old state house. There we saw we could get a combo ticket to cover that plus the meeting house, so we got it. We looked around the state house and almost instantly regretted it. There are practically no real artifacts since the both buildings have been remade over time and used for a to. Of stuff. Both are really now just history lessons on boards and displays. Informative but not worth the price really. Wikipedia could probably cover it. A guy gave a talk and tried to be entertaining, but again not worth it. When we passed the Kings Cross church we noticed the historic haunted Omni Hotel. Mom noticed the menu outside said home of the Boston cream pie. We decided to go back there since it opened at 4pm. We got an average Old Fashioned with walnut bitters and a pretty tasty BBQ Brisket sandwich. For dessert we had the Boston cream pie, which looked great but was dry and unimpressive. Average experience in an impressive historic place. After that we went back to the hotel for a shower and to crash. Exhausting day.