Saturday before we left Pennsylvania we stopped by Hershey’s Chocolate World in Hershey PA. To my surprise, we were both really disappointed. They sold all of their products there but at a fairly steep price, and there was only one sample offered. I kept comparing it to our tour of Jelly Belly where they offered samples of everything and also sold their products at a discounted price. So I wasn’t too excited about Hershey's.
So we got back on the road the same day and drove out of PA, across Connecticut, across the edge of New York, and just a little into Massachusetts, where we stayed the night at the Rest Area at exit 4. Next morning we stopped by the 84 Diner for breakfast. It’s a cool retro diner and they had a pretty good breakfast.
On to the Minuteman RV Park, which is one of the few RV parks we could find in the Boston area. It’s rustic - it looks like we’re parking in the woods, but it’s near the train into Boston, and this is the first time we’ve been hooked up with cable since sometime last October!
Sunday afternoon we decided to skip the train and drive into Boston. And where better to start than the Old North Church? This is where Paul Revere put two lanterns in the steeple to alert the people that the British were coming. The inside of the church is really interesting - the pew area is divided into little sections by 4 foot walls. Inside each of those wall sections is a bench and a small rack for hymn books. The story is that on cold days (and Massachusetts has a lot of cold days) people would bring warm stones or bricks with them when they came to church. Those little walls helped keep the heat in where it was needed. One section was bought by Paul Revere’s son, and a little plaque says it is still owned by his descendants.
Just a bit down the road is Paul Revere’s house. Like so many historic places in Boston, it’s butted up against other, taller buildings. The house is a gray clapboard, two-story in one section and 3-story in the other.
Inside the rooms are decorated in the style of his day and lots of the pieces were actually owned by Paul. And outside is one of the big bells he cast in 1804 for a local church. It’s in a glass display that made my photo look like a double-exposure.
By now it had been a long time since those eggs and pancakes at the 84 Diner, so we asked one of the store owners where we could get something light to eat. We were directed to Express in the Italian section. And this section is really Italian! In Express both the staff and most of the customers were speaking Italian. Fortunately the staff also spoke English. Randy and I split a sub sandwich, which was plenty for two and very good.
Downtown Boston has a neat system - a small brick path embedded in the sidewalks which leads tourists from one site to another. The path took us to the Oyster House (advertised as the oldest restaurant in the US) and Green Dragon. The Green Dragon is named in honor of the original Green Dragon tavern, where patriots first plotted revolution. Unfortunately the original was destroyed by the British.
The Italian section of Boston has a lot of great restaurants, of course, but it also has a lot of bakeries. Some had big lines out the door so we skipped those and got some cookies at Lyndells Bakery. Those cookies were so good we went back and both the last two they had!
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