It was Tuesday the 31st of October, Halloween! Now that all the wedding events and rellie catch-ups were done, we had a few days left in Boston to do some more exploring, and enjoy an American Halloween.
After both Mikl and Anto had felt rather unwell the previous day, everyone woke up on Tuesday morning, after a bit of a sleep-in (til at least 8am!) feeling a lot better. The rain had also stopped, so we made plans to head out for an American diner breakfast, before tackling the Freedom Trail.
A diner breakfast on Massachusetts avenue…
To date we’d eaten all our breakfasts in our apartment, and were getting a bit sick of sugary cereal and toast. We’d planned to take the kids out to try a diner breakfast, but with unwell adults, the plans had been delayed a little.
Today Mikl and Anto were actually feeling like eating. There appeared to be a few well-rated diners not too far from our Cambridge apartment. We headed out into the cold. No more T-shirts, coats were definitely needed as it was only 3 degrees.
It was beautiful and sunny so we enjoyed our walk down Massachusetts Avenue, a direction we hadn’t wandered so far during our time in Boston. We found a diner that rated pretty well and everyone ordered an array of local specialties, including waffles with chicken, pancakes and seemingly even more fried chicken. Apparently fried chicken goes with everything.
With a warm breakfast and bad coffee onboard, it was time to tackle the rest of the Freedom trail. We’d seen some of highlights during our Duck Tour and general wanders around Boston, but had wanted to walk the trail and learn more about the locations.
On the Freedom Trail…
Boston is famous for it’s iconic Freedom Trail – a 2.5 mile (4km) marked route that had 16 nationally significant historic sites. These include museums, churches, meeting houses, cemetries, parks, a ship and historic markers that tell the story of the American Revolution.
As we planned to follow the trail from it’s start, we needed to head towards Boston Common, via our usual trip on the Red Line from Central.
Pretty soon we were back over in Boston. The Tourist information kiosk had plenty of paper maps for the Freedom Trail, which had additional information. You could easily navigate on your phone but the maps were handy and informative.
The trail starts in Boston Common and is easy to follow as it is literally marked by a red brick path, with inlaid bricks. We’d already spent plenty of time in Boston Common, exploring, but today followed the Freedom Trail line and went for a closer look at the Massachusetts State House, with it’s impressive gold dome.
Next it was off to Park Street Church (which is very close to Omni Parker House, where we spent a lot of time over the weekend as part of wedding functions). The Church stands on top of the site of Boston’s town grain storage and was the first landmark travelers saw when approaching Boston.
We then went to the Granary burial ground, established in 1660, and final resting place of many famous Americans. We had a quick wander around but with our limited American history the significance of many of the graves were lost on us. We had walked, and driven, past this site a large number of times during our stay and it was always full of tourists. We also paid a quick visit to the adjacent King’s chapel and King’s chapel burying ground. There are a lot of burial grounds in a small area of inner Boston!
Next it was off to the Boston Latin school site and the Benjamin Franklin statue. The donkey statue was more popular with the kids though 🙂 This is known as the ‘democracy donkey’ and there is a rather interesting story as to how this statue came to be here!
Next it was off to the Old Corner Bookstore, constructed in 1718 and downtown Boston’s oldest commercial building and home to publisher Ticknor and Fields who produced many historic American titles.
It was then past the Old South Meeting House, where the Boston Tea Party began. This site is adjacent to the Old State House, the oldest surviving public building in Boston, built in 1713.
We then visited the Boston Massacre site and Fanueil Hall – where America’s first Town Meeting was held. All the sites are very close to each other and the redbrick line is easy to follow, as well as the map.
It was here we were back to the North End, site of many delicious Italian treats. We decided that we weren’t really hungry enough for lunch, so we’d better keep checking out the Freedom Trail sites in this area and maybe detour for a bakery snack towards the end.
In the North End area are Paul Revere House (named for the famous patriot and the oldest remaining structure in Boston); Old North Church (intrinsically linked to the start of the American Revolution); and, Copp’s Hill burying ground.
While we had been walking the trail we hadn’t spent a ton of time at each site as we weren’t as enthused by American history as perhaps some of the other tourists were. It was, however, a pretty easy way to see many of the major historical sites of Boston and learn a little more about American history. It was also free and a lovely walk.
At this point we decided that the final two sites of the Freedom Trail, the USS Constitution and the Bunker Hill monument we probably wouldn’t revisit. We’d thoroughly enjoyed our visit to both a few days earlier. These 2 sites are probably the geographically furthest away and covered an additional 2km. As we had conveniently ticked them off in earlier exploring, the kids declared it morning tea time….
Cannoli and Cop Slides….
Since we were in the North End, and we had somehow gotten through our pile of pastry treats from our Sunday night visit to the Italian district with our fellow wedding guests, we decided we’d revisit Bova for today’s treats.
There were still way too many sweet options to choose from but with choices made it was time to sit in the sun for a bit and snack on cannolis.
It was October 2023 and just a couple of months earlier, in August, a meme of a police officer tumbling down the children’s slide in the new park outside Boston City Hall. The video went viral and we’d actually seen a lot of references to it before we’d arrived in Boston. The now infamous ‘cop slide’ had been mentioned on our Duck Tour and by a few locals. We’d passed the park a couple of times but today we actually had time to play on the slide, made famous for injuring an adult. The kids went pretty fast, but luckily there were no injuries.
Lunch at Quincy Market
We had not yet had a chance to visit the famous Quincy Market. We’d passed by several times, including on our Freedom Trail walk that morning. Quincy Market is right next to Fanueil Hall. The historic building houses over 50 different eateries and also has an ample supply of souvenir and local shops.
Being right on lunch time it was very busy at Quincy. There was a rather large array of food options to choose from. In the end everyone, aside from me, had a different version of clam chowder. Apparently you can get clam chowder in many forms! I found a pretty good veggie taco option. Unfortunately it was so busy that all the seating areas (across two floors) were occupied so we found some stairs near the shopping area to eat, which wasn’t ideal.
The clam chowders were pretty popular with all. With full bellies, we engaged in a little souvenir shopping, and lots of wandering the nearby shops, debating with the kids what they thought they should spend their pocked money on and what they thought we should buy for them!
It was now about 2pm and we’d covered over 6.5km of walking that morning in our strolls around the Freedom Trail, with North End, cop slide and Quincy Market detours. Zinnia was was feeling a bit tired so we walked back to Downtown Crossing and caught the train back to our Cambridge apartment.
Getting our Halloween on….
Zinnia decided she definitely needed a sleep for maximum candy-collecting energy! Anto took the other kids down to the costume shop to grab some makeup supplies to assist with our costumes.
Unlike in Australia in late October, it gets dark significantly earlier in Boston. This meant we could head out for trick or treating not too late. After her nap Zinnia was ready to get into ‘witch mode’, and the new costume make-up was put to good use giving her ‘witch eyebrows’ which somehow took about 3 days to get off.
Astrid was turned into a very cute bat and Soren a pirate. Anto was King and I got to be a giant fluffy cow. I had picked my costume in part because I’d looked at the weather forecast and figured walking around in a furry suit when it was cold was going to be a good idea, and I was right!
Trick or treating…..
Halloween and trick or treating is gaining more popularity in Australia but is nowhere near what it is in the US. Astrid had been for a couple of little trick or treats with friends and there are a few decorated houses in our area. Some years we’ve bought treats and had no one come though. When planning this trip we figured we might as well stay on in the US for Halloween and make sure the kids got a chance to experience an American trick-or-treat.
We had thoroughly enjoyed seeing all the superbly decorated houses and yards during our time in Boston and Cambridge. Every time we walked around a new area, or down a different street, we’d found some amazing decorations.
All dressed up, we head out at around 4pm. Mikl had decided he would hang out in the apartment and enjoy some kid-free time, without a costume or makeup involved!
I’d discovered plenty of Halloween activities going on in the local area in Cambridge so our first stop was to the public library where they were making and decorating treat bags. There was also a spider ‘treasure hunt’ which the kids loved and they ended up collecting prizes of boxes of chalk and plenty of chocolate. The librarians also gave us some heads ups on other local Halloween activities.
Despite it being relatively early we saw the odd person out already dressed up and didn’t get any particularly strange looks. Although it was mostly kids out at this time dressed up, not the adults!
My research and local knowledge had said the fire stations were the place to visit on Halloween. Everyone knows Soren loves fire engines so it took very little convincing for the kids to run in the direction of the local fire house.
The firemen were handing out literally buckets of candy – and the kids declared that these were some of the highest quality offerings of the night! They also let the kids hop in the fire engine and showed us around. It was pretty cool seeing the American fire stations you often see in movies and TV shows, up close!
The firemen were very friendly and enjoyed a good chat with us, and posed for a few photos. Just as we were tearing the kids away from the buckets of chocolate and candy a call came in and the firies were quickly jumping in their truck and roaring away with lights and sirens on….. so we timed that well!
We’d also been told that Town Hall had plenty of Halloween activities, so we set off in that direction next…..
Some of the store front decorations in Central square were pretty awesome, plenty of hanging bodies and fake blood!
Once we got to Town Hall there were special kids activities, live music, endless treats, and hot non-alcoholic cider, which was lovely to warm up with as it was under 5 degrees.
The kids had already managed to fill their treat bags they’d made at the library and we haven’t even begun the real trick-or-treat yet! Luckily I’d put a few of our fold-up shopping bags in my cow-suit pockets.
It was just after 5pm and there were now plenty of dressed up kids around the streets. We decided to start our trick-or-treat. Cambridge being very suburban, we’d been told it was a great place to trick-or-treat. The kids got into the swing pretty quickly. Unlike pretty at home in Canberra, pretty much everyone is expecting kids to come knocking and a lot of treats were available…..
Everyone was getting in on the act. We came across an aged care home that had fun decorations and invited the kids in to look at the ‘scary room’ decorations and were handing out cupcakes, decorated biscuits and drinks. The kids were quite a fan of this one!
We were a tad on the early side to be out trick-or-treating as quite a few people weren’t home yet. We encountered the odd person just arriving home, who’d run inside to grab treats so the kids didn’t miss out. The emergency shopping bags were quickly required. The main problem was all the adults telling the kids to ‘take as much as you want’ while I was shouting ‘just 1 each!’……
Yep after not very long we were lugging full shopping bags of candy and that was with me trying to talk the homeowners into giving them less!
It was finally getting dark at around 6pm which certainly added to the fun. More and more kids were out in the streets but we were trying to convince ours that it was getting a bit late and we didn’t need to take 14kg of candy back to Canberra.
There were the constant cries of ‘just one more house’ as we were almost back to our apartment. Eventually the cold was getting to Zinnia so they agreed, very reluctantly, that we could finish the trick or treat, on the proviso that a couple more treats were consumed!
In the end it was the adults that had to call the end of the trick or treating, at a very pathetic not even 7pm, but we all had fun and certainly enjoyed a very different Halloween experience to back home!
Up next…
Our final 2 days in Boston saw us visit Fenway Park and some cool sculptures at the Museum of Fine Arts, the Mapparium, the amazing architecture of the Boston Public Library, the Boston Public Garden and our final exploring of the Boston waterfront and Boston Common. Boston definitely turned on the cold for us in our last couple of days!
