Tam's Think Tank

Today we went to towns with names like Gloucester, Ipswich, Salem, Revere, Essex, and Rockport. It was, yes, another good day.

We spent most of our time in Salem, walking the city checking out all the sites to be seen. I had two reactions to it. One, it was strange and sort of cool to be in a place I’ve read so much about, knowing that major events from our history took place right where we were walking. The other reaction… Salem is a tourist town. We found few places with any historical information. What we did find… a lot of tours, mysteriously all costing around $8.00 (actually, we didn’t find that, we were told that by a couple of guys we stopped and asked directions from). They were everywhere. We’d see a sign, looking like it would be pointing us to a historical point of interest, like the Witch Village, and we’d get there and find it was a shop selling witch “stuff”. Whatever that is. We never went into any of the shops. All I know for sure is that the popularity of the Harry Potter books has been quite the boon for Salem tourism. We did manage to find some very cool older buildings and the burying point, a cool yet sort of creepy cemetery. Again though, getting back to my first point, it was cool being in a place where we know so much history happened.

After Salem we made our way to Gloucester, on Cape Ann, where we had some lunch, yes I had another lobster roll ( at the market value price of just under $24… it was good, though I’m not sure it was THAT good… Karen had Cajun Haddock and it was only $12. I tasted it, and it was as good if not better than mine. Ah well… we are in New England… a girl has to have her lobster roll. I think it’s a rule or something) Things were hoppin’ in Gloucester. The streets were lined with people staking out places for the evenings parade. We thought about staying to watch, but decided to get out of town before it started. From Gloucester we went to Ipswich, the town with the distinction of being the oldest period town in the country. It was incorporated in, I believe, 1626. However, we didn’t stay long… seems people in Ipswich don’t believe in public restrooms, so we had to go, because, you guessed it, we had to go. We ended up stopping just out of town at a public pool, seeing a bunch of cars there and thinking they must have one. They did, and when Karen went inside there were a bunch of little girls who screamed when she walked in. And as she came out of the stall they all started saying, “she’s coming out, she’s coming out”. She said it was hilarious.

From there we traveled back toward Cambridge, making it in time to walk across to Boston, look around a little, walk over to the Esplanade where the Boston Pops was practicing for the big event tomorrow, and finally walking back over the river and to our hotel. With a stop, of course, for what has become our nightly ritual of getting a slice of cheese cake at the Cheese Cake Factory. Tonight… original cheese cake with strawberries for Karen, and chocolate mousse for me. Tasty.

Tomorrow… the plan anyway, is that we take the T into Boston, walk the freedom trail, enjoy some food, somewhere, and then finish off the day with a viewing of the 4th fireworks in Bean Town. Should be fun. I say the plan because with us, we usually have some sort of idea about what we’re going to do, but we don’t like to set anything in stone. We love to go off the path, hence our day today, when we left Salem and headed North to Cape Ann. That was not the original idea, but it’s where we ended up, and we had a great time.