Plymouth

 

I love Boston!  We are so happy to be back home!  We had a great summer, but we really love being back in Boston.  Mario’s truckin’ along with school and Josh and I are keeping busy with all kinds of stuff.  Mario doesn’t have school on Wednesdays, so we’ve been taking advantage of the opportunity to check some stuff off our huge list of things we have to do here in our last year.  Our first trip was to Plymouth, Massachusetts.  We started at the infamous Plymouth Rock, which after years of abuse (the city has moved it various times, split it in half once and then cemented it back together, and tourists used to be able to chip off pieces as souvenirs) is now about four feet long.  You can see how big it is compared to the leaves in the water and the bricks.  Completely and totally unimpressive.  

After basking in the glory of Plymouth Rock, we headed over to the Mayflower II.  It’s an exact recreation of the original Mayflower and was sailed to Plymouth from England in 1957.  It was very interesting to see exactly how much space they didn’t have on that weeks-long journey.  Most of the passengers weren’t even allowed on the deck for the whole trip. 

We left the Mayflower II and headed over to Wood’s Seafood, a little shack recommended to me on a previous visit by a gas station attendant.  Excellent fish and chips, clam chowder, and onion rings.  AWESOME!!!  There’s something about New England onion rings.  They’re light, crispy, salty, sweet, and not oily at all.  I think it has something to do with cornmeal and milk, but whatever it is they’re really amazing and we eat them every chance we get because you sure can’t get them like this anywhere else I’ve been!

 

Plymouth, in addition to its fame as the landing place of the Pilgrims, is a very cute little town.  We wandered past houses built in the 1600s, trinket shops, seafood shacks, and finally found ourselves at a working grist mill from 1636 that also houses a cute little creamery.  Mario thought he’d get a jump start on Thanksgiving (since we were in the home of the Pilgrims, after all) with a Pumpkin Pie Sundae – ginger snaps, caramel sauce, and pumpkin ice cream – mmmmmmmmm!