Marg & Brian's Iceland to Boston Cruise

We decided to venture outside of downtown Boston. We travelled across the Charles River north to the town of Cambridge Massachusetts which is the home of Harvard University. As we exited the subway system, we signed up for an escorted tour of the campus by a graduate student. Our guide was a recent graduate master student in education. His area of expertise is how to reduce economic inequities caused by disparity in education. He hopes to complete a research project this year and then return to his home in England and get his doctorate at Oxford. Our tour started with a short history of the university.  Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. By the 19th century, Harvard emerged as the most prominent academic and cultural institution among American elite. Over the 20th century, as its endowment grew and prominent intellectuals and professors bec...

There was one more site on the Freedom Trail that we wanted to visit. Late this morning we visited the Navel Shipyard in Boston Harbour and toured the USS Constitution. USS Constitution, also known as Old Ironsides, is a three-masted wooden-hulled heavy frigate. She is the world's oldest commissioned naval warship still afloat. The Constitution was built in the North End of Boston and was launched in 1797. She was larger and more heavily armed than standard frigates of the period. Her first duties were to provide protection for American merchant shipping during the Quasi-War with France and to defeat the Barbary pirates in the First Barbary War. The Constitution is mostly noted for her actions during the War of 1812 against the United Kingdom, when she captured numerous merchant ships and defeated five British warships. She continued to serve as flagship for the Mediterranean and African fleet. In the 1840s she circled the world. During the American Civil War, she served as a tra...

We decided today that we would take the historical tour of downtown Boston, knew as the Freedom Trail. The Freedom Trail is a four kilometer long path through Boston that passes by sixteen locations mainly dealing with the American revolution. It winds from the Boston Common in downtown Boston, across the Charles River to the Old North Church in the North End and the Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown. Getting to the Boston Common from our hotel was simple. The subway system is fast and simple to navigate. It may be one of the oldest systems in North America, but it functions smoothly or at least it did today. I had a couple of Bostonians tell me that today was an exception. Our tour guide was a gem. The guides dress up in period customs and take on the personality of a player in the revolution. Our guide was hilarious and very informative. He reminded me of Mel Brooks in his delivery and even his facial expressions. His running joke was that history had it wrong and that he had a...

This will be our last time staying at a Hampton Inn. This hotel Hampton Inn – Logan Airport is beyond pathetic. There has been one problem after another since we arrived yesterday. It started at the check-in desk. I asked where I could park our car while we signed in. She told me that I could park in either parking lot. These lots were gated, and I couldn’t enter either lot. I was able to find a spot in a No Parking zone, A minor complaint but it was a harbinger of things to come. When I returned the rental car to the airport, I was told to go to specific gate and the shuttle bus would pick me up. What she didn’t tell me and another gentleman who was also waiting for the bus was that we needed to call the front desk and ask for the shuttle. Because it runs every 30 minutes we assumed it was automatic. We were stuck at the airport for over an hour. The hotel was supposed to have a restaurant. What we got was a bar that serves snacks and quick bar food. The hot tub was broken. ...

Today we started the final leg of our vacation. We are moving from Cape Cod to Boston. We’ll be in Boston until Thursday. Along the route to Boston, we passed through the historic town of Plymouth Massachusetts. Plymouth is a beautiful coastal town south of Boston. As you would expect, on a holiday weekend the town was jammed packed full of tourists. It took me about 20 minutes to find a parking spot. Plymouth is the site of the first Pilgrim settlement, founded in 1620. Plymouth Rock, a boulder in Pilgrim Memorial State Park, marks the place where settlers are thought to have first landed on shore. It might be one the most photographed single rocks in the world The Mayflower II, a full-scale replica of the ship that carried the Pilgrims across the Atlantic, is the main attraction in this waterfront park. The information displays told the stories of the 102 immigrants from the UK and Holland that travelled for months aboard a stinking vessel, sharing space with farm animals in extr...

Our last full day on Cape Cod was spent in the tiny town of Chatham. It is a quaint little town filled with speciality shops. The reason I like it is because of its unique Cape Cod architecture. The area was first visited by Europeans in the early 1600s. Samuel de Champlain established a camp here but within a very short period of time a battle erupted between the French and the native Indians. After suffering some casualties, the French left and continued their explorations, travelling down the St. Lawerence and Ottawa rivers. In the 1700s the English established an illegal village on the current site. To be incorporated they needed a reverend and a working tavern. After a period, they found a cleric and built a tavern to become the village of Chatham. Chatham has undergone a transformation from a farming village to a fishing village and is now reliant on the tourist trade. Tonight was the last night the entire family will be together on this trip. Ken and his family left after dinn...