Boston

So I didn't find Boston that enthralling - I'm not sure if that was because most of the stuff to do revolved around American history (which I got my fill of in DC) or because I was looking forward to New York, but I suspect that it had a lot to do with the fact it rained almost non-stop for the days I spent in Boston.

THE FREEDOM TRAIL

The Freedom Trail is a 4km path which winds its way through Boston, highlighting some of its most historic sites.

Boston Common - the oldest public park in America. Established in 1634, it was initially used for training militia and grazing cattle.

"Make way for the ducklings" It's part of the Boston Common - not so historic, but so cute that I had to take a pic...

The Robert Gould Shaw Memorial. It was built in 1897 to honor the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, the first all-Black regiment recruited in the North to fight for the Union army during the Civil War. (The story of this is depicted in the movie Glory starring Matthew Broderick and Denzel Washington).

Park St Church - the scene of the first Anti-Slavery speech by William Lloyd Garrison in 1829.

Granary Burying Ground is the final resting place for: John Hancock, Robert Treat Paine & Samuel Adams (signatories on the Declaration of Independence) as well as Peter Faneuil, Paul Revere, Benjamin Franklin's parents and the victims of the Boston Massacre.

The location of country's the first public schools built around 1635. Samuel Adams and Benjamin Franklin attended the school.

Old South Meeting House - it was built in as a church in 1729 (Benjamin Franklin was baptised here). It was later used as a meeting place. On 16 December 1773, a meeting to protest the tax on tea spilled out onto the street and resulted in the Boston Tea Party, one of the events that started the American Revolution.

The site of the Boston Massacre. This is really a bit of misnomer - 5 colonists were killed by British guards in 1770. The colonist were unarmed but calling 5 dead a massacre seems a bit gratuitous to me...

The U.S.S. Constitution was launched in Boston in 1797 and is the oldest commissioned warship afloat in the world.

OTHER SIGHTS

This is the firehouse that MTV's The Real World Boston was filmed in 1997. I'm not sure if it was THE first reality TV series filmed, but I know that it was the first thing I ever watched - the birth of a genre eh?

Moving onto buildings that housed some more intelligent thought, part of MIT's campus.

I could hardly forget to include Harvard...

And just to show that it's not always sunshine and roses - a picture of me in travel mode, the day I arrived in Boston from Washington, complete with wet socks. Lucky my lovely macpac jacket kept my upper half nice and dry :)