4 Days In & Around Boston

Day One

….of 4 Days In and Around Boston begins with a visit back-in-time to Plimouth Plantation in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Plimoth Patuxet (1947), a living history museum of a 17th-century English settlement is located near Cape Cod and is open mid-March to Thanksgiving (approximately). This English village comes alive with professionals in period dress cooking, talking, fiddling, feeding animals, and being immersed in their roles. It is a great place to ask questions and learn more about this time period. It’s quite amusing to ask them, for example, about their belief in witches! Nearby sites include a visit to the Mayflower and the Plimoth Grist Mill.

Day Two

…of 4 Days In and Around Boston is The Freedom Trail and the Boston Tea Party in Boston itself! There are many tours available to take you around the Freedom Trail, but you can also do it yourself! We purchased this book and read up on each destination on the Freedom Trail, as we traveled to Boston. Then we used the book and our phone’s GPS to help us navigate around Boston and see each sight. I knew about the historical events before this trip, but by being there, reading, and seeing it in person, the history came together and is much more memorable. We also visited the Boston Tea Party Museum. Here, your party can take part in a re-enactment of the colonists’ outrage concerning the taxation issues. Afterward, you can take photographs pretending to throw the tea overboard!

Day Three

…of 4 Days In and Around Boston is a visit to Walden’s Pond in Concord. Walden’s Pond is described as a “Dog-free park with trails & swimming, where Henry David Thoreau wrote the book, Walden.” As great fans of this book, we really enjoyed the mix between nature and history as we explored this area. It is neat to be able to visit Thoreau’s original cabin. Notable nearby attractions include the Minute Man National Historical Park, Louisa May Alcott’s home, the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, the Battle Road Trail, and the Concord Museum.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)