On the first day of our vacation, Jim and I got up at 4 a.m., and the kids were up by 4:30! We took a 6:00 a.m. flight to Cleveland OH, where we boarded another flight to Boston MA. The second flight had a first class cabin, in which we all enjoyed a lovely breakfast of fruit, yogurt and croissants on Continental Airlines china. These were Esme's first flights ever and she took it all like a seasoned traveler. She thought everything was "good" and didn't even flinch at takeoff and landing (something I still do).
Once we landed in Boston, we picked up our rental car (a white Toyota Rav4) and we went downtown, where we drove in circles for quite some time before we found a parking garage near enough to our destination - the U. S. S. Constitution, aka Old Ironsides. We took a tour of the ship, ably guided by Petty Officer 3rd Class MacGillivray, born and raised in nearby Quincy, Mass. I think everyone's favorite part of the ship was the gun deck, where we were regaled with stories of the ship's conquests.
After the ship tour, we stopped in the National Park gift shop, where Esme and I continued our tour of East Coast ladies' rooms (having begun at the Boston Logan International Airport). I won't list every one of the probably hundreds of public and semi-public restrooms that we visited, but we'll just foreshadow a bit and tell you that nothing beats the Waldorf-Astoria main lobby ladies' restroom. We visited that one three times.
We stopped for lunch at a small cafe on the way back to the parking garage - great sandwiches and a banana apiece. At that time we also began our collection of juice bottles and their brightly colored contents, a collection which would last for several days as it was gradually added to and subtracted from. We then drove to Plymouth - not far, and a nice easy drive without any traffic difficulty - and yet still just long enough for both kids to catch a little nap.
At Plimoth Plantation, there are several things to see. I do have to mention The Mooflower, a rather kitschy life-size figure of a cow dressed up as a cross between a ship and a Pilgrim, which graced the lobby of the ticket office. Or perhaps "graced" isn't the right word.
After a short introductory movie, we headed off to the Wampanoag homesite, where real native people live from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. as the native people lived back in 1620. However, they're not really playing the parts of people from that time, so you can talk to them and ask them questions from a modern point of view. One woman was cooking a seafood soup and explaining all sorts of things - from what was in the soup to why there was this big structure in her cornfield (it's a play structure for the children which doubles as shade for the plants and triples as a scarecrow). Another woman was trying to keep five little kids in loincloths from wreaking havoc on the whole camp.
We headed up the path to Plimoth, a reenactment of the original settlement further up the coast. There are houses, gardens, a fort/church, animals, and people, all living and acting like it's 1620. We stopped in one cottage where a young boy (perhaps age ten) was sharpening his knife and he and his father were posing riddles to passers-by. "How far must you walk into the woods before you're walking out of the woods?" Halfway, of course. "What is taller than a house, but smaller than a mouse?" A star! "What is small enough to hold in your hand and big enough to fill a room?" A candle.
After the village, we went to the crafts building, where craftspeople make a variety of products that are used in the village and sold in the Plantation shops - including pottery, wood items, arrows, and cloth. Not much was going on, but we did get to watch a woman making a pottery cup. We had a snack in the visitors' center and headed out.
We checked into our hotel (the Hilton Garden Inn) after our visit to the Plantation, and then went out looking for a geocache nearby. John Cleese (now the voice on Jim's TomTom navigator) got us close in the car, and then we used my new GPS thingamajig to nail down the location. We found a big plastic bin with tons of toys inside, so we switched one out with something of our own and signed the log! (Which reminds me, I have to log the caches we found.)
We had dinner at Uno Chicago Grill and stopped at Target (okay, okay, yes, they're both places we go all the time at home) and then went back to the hotel and got ready for bed. We began a trend of the kids pretending to sleep while actually watching TV until quite late, and eventually all going to sleep at pretty much the same time! It was a good and super tiring first day.
I really hope we get our luggage and contents back.