During the week Sean and Fiona took a couple of day trips to different local sites (depending on Fiona's and Sean's moods, the weather, etc). Over the weekend we all went into Boston on Saturday and out to Connecticut to visit friends on Sunday.
We decided to take the train into the city on Saturday so Fiona got to experience her first train ride. It was a little loud, but that didn't bother her at all. She was just looking around, taking it all in. The only thing that bothered her was when a lady in the elevator on the way off the platform said hi to her. I can't even count now how many times a stranger has gotten too close (trying to be nice and friendly) and she'll break out in tears.
Our first stop of the day was the Sam Adams Brewery for a tour. We got there around 9:15 and even though they officially open at 10AM our tour actually started at 9:45. It was nice being the first group because it was a little smaller than the groups after us. The brewery itself is very small and the beer making portion of the tour only took about 20 minutes. They let us taste some of the malt and smell the hops. The beer tasting portion of the tour took about another 20 minutes. We got to sample 3 different beers (Boston Lager, Octoberfest and Crystal, which our tour guide said they aren't planning to make available for general sales). Our tour guide went through the four steps of beer tasting (look, smell, taste and chew) and we got a little souvenir glass with one of the steps on it. I only tasted a little of each; the lager was ok, but I'm a sucker for the Octoberfest and the Crystal beer was very good also.
By time the tour ended we were starting to get hungry. We decided to take the train up to Boston Common and look for somewhere to eat around there. We ended up finding a restaurant called Max and Dylans that had excellent food. It was a little more pricey than the McDonalds and sandwich shop nearby, but definitely better quality and worth it. They also had some interesting artwork on the wall.
After lunch we started walking the Freedom Trail through Boston. It's a 3 mile trail that goes by over a dozen historic sites in Boston. There is a red line on the ground that you follow the entire way (so it's easy not to get lost).
We stopped at a number of stops along the trail, including King's Chapel, King's Chapel Burying Ground, Benjamin Franklin Statue/Boston Latin School and Old North Church and got a couple of nice pictures. We just walked by a lot of sites since it was pretty crowded and some places made you pay to go inside. Fiona fell asleep somewhere along the way, but only took about a hour long nap. It was pretty noisy and bumpy so I'm surprised she even slept that long.
The last stop was the USS Constitution since we opted to skip Bunker Hill. We were pretty hot and tired (it was 87 at the end of Sept in Boston!) and getting hungry again by this point. Our original plan was to meet a friend of Sean's for dinner at 7 so we still had some time to kill. We decided to take a ride up to Cambridge to check out MIT and Harvard. MIT was a stop or two before Harvard so we stopped there first. It didn't really have a college campus feel and was very dead. We walked around a little and checked out the nearby water.
We then proceeded up to Harvard. This area had many more people and was much livelier. Shortly after we got there we got a call that our dinner plans changed so we ended up finding a place near Harvard to grab some dinner.
By time dinner was done, it was definitely getting close to Fiona's bed time (especially with the little short naps she took in the stroller during the afternoon). We made it all the way back to the truck before she started to melt down from being tired. Thankfully she fell asleep on the drive back to the hotel. Sean did end up meeting his friend later while Fiona and I slept.
Sunday we slept in, got some breakfast and then headed out to Connecticut. We stopped by the TAPS headquarters in Warwick, RI on our way there. No one was around (probably because it was Sunday), but we took a couple of pictures anyways.
We decided to meet Stew, Amy and their kids (Emily, Sarah and Sam) in Mystic, CT at the Mystic Seaport; it sounded like something interesting and low-key to do. They have a bunch of different ships that you can walk through and old buildings with different historic functions (like a printer, cooper, etc). The older kids seemed more interested in the ships. I thought the cooper (barrel-maker) was fascinating...he explained how they formed the barrel to fit perfectly together.
We had dinner at their place, relaxed a little and then headed back to the hotel. Fiona loved having other "little people" to watch and hang out with. Sam (Stew and Amy's son) had a dump truck that she was playing with and she kept smiling and laughing at the other kids.
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