Tue 2 Jul - Boston, MA

Salem revisited, bye bye driving cars in the US and hostel living in Boston...

Today is the last day driving as we have to return the car in Boston by 4pm. So we pack up and leave our motel and head to Salem for the 10am opening of the Salem Witch Museum (which we missed yesterday).

We bought our admission tickets and whilst we waited for our 10.30 tour to start we explored the gift shop and read the materials on posters around the wall.

Di returning to her roots?

There was a listing of all the names of the accused and executed during the "hysteria" of that summer of 1692. "Hysteria" is the word that we saw has commonly been used in describing the events these days.

Hans checked the list for any reference to Di' ancestors...

Interestingly they listed a possible cause of the young girls bewitched behavior - a parasite that grows commonly on grains and can have LSD effects. This is unlikely to be the reason as many years later one of the girls (then an older woman) admitted they did what they did for "sport, with no ill will".

She's a witch, she's a witch...

Flying to the moon...?

We leave Salem Witch Museum feeling that we could have done without it. In our view, it was not a museum at all but more theatre with us, the punters, sitting in a room and dummies gradually being lit up all around us.

We went back to the Salem Witch Memorial and to the adjacent graveyard. Here are the 20 stone benches again...

The stone of the unfortunate bloke who was pressed to death by rocks.

No, not my ancestor either...

Suddenly, there was a ghost on the graveyard...

A happy face in the dead centre of town...

We headed out of Salem and took the slow road to Boston given that check in at our hostel is not until 3pm and Boston is only about 30 minutes away if you use the interstate. We arrived at a seaside town, or probably more a suburb to Boston, called Swampscott where we stopped for an ice cream and yoghurt.

As you can see, we arrived during low tide. The water must be very shallow a fair bit out as there was a lot of mud, which had not prevented the paddle boarders that you can see in the picture from returning from wherever they had been.

This photo is taken from the same spot as the previous photo. Downtown Boston is not that far away.

Thanks to Google maps we found our way into Boston, through several complex tunnels junctions, with speeding traffic in at least 4 lanes beside us. Our hostel, 40 Berkley, was easy to find once we reached South End. We got lucky with a parking spot across the street and paid 50 cents into a meter so we had time to unload our luggage, register and drop everything unto our room.

 

Here is a outside shot of our hostel. Yep, not your average hostel. It looks like a converted office building.

We have a small private room on the top floor with 2 single bunk like beds, a desk, a cupboard and some fans. More like a cell than Hilton...

And this is the corridor where our room is to the right. Not that exciting, hey? Notice the large industrial strength fan. Air con is not part of the deal.

We work out how to get to Atlantic Avenue to drop off our rental car and have a smooth run there - it took less than 10 minutes. We had no issues dropping off the car with Alamo but no news yet of our damage costs from the "deer incident". The staff are nice and tried to provide some reassurance that we would likely hear from them via email in the next few weeks.

We knew the general walking direction back to the hostel and with a small map from Alamo we headed towards Boston Common.

On the way we stumbled onto this lovely small park near the Post Office. A couple of kids were running through the fountain in their swimsuits. Di was tempted...

Boston Common reminded us a little of Hyde Park, crossed with the Domain, in Sydney. This looked quite like the Archibald Fountain near Macquarie street in Hyde Park, albeit smaller.

And these large trees overhanging the paths also looked familiar.

Other sections of Boston Common are more like the Domain in Sydney, with a few playing fields and an area to have a performance or concert. There was also this space where a bunch of dubious looking characters smoked something that perhaps was not entirely legal, the smell of the smoke gave it away.

 

The guys below were rehearsing for Shakespeare in the Park, which unfortunately for us, starts this Saturday and is free, but is the same day that we have to leave the country...

We moved into the Public Park and we were strongly reminded of European gardens - lovely walkways between trees, lined with benches, good pond areas and ..."keep of the grass" signs.

This pond feature looked like a "must do" for another day - being motored around on a swan barge. Sufficiently tacky. Apparently it's been operating since 1877.

The second half of the pond was behind us, with a bridge to walk across on, and the swan barge continued there.

A "guilty" looking squirrel...

We headed back towards our local area being South End and came across this statue of George (Washington of course). He's wearing a XXXL Boston Bruins ice hockey jumper - the recent runners up of the Stanley Cup in ice hockey - with Boston Strong printed on the back.

Here we are looking back east towards the park, Boston Common and the statue of George Washington.

We arrived back to our hostel 40 Berkley around 5pm and sat down in the lobby to do some blogging and look up dinner options, on the iPads that the hostel provided. Nice touch.

40 Berkley hostel is huge. This photo is taken from the mezzanine level with joint space for business entrepreneurs and guests / residents, and looking down into the lobby.

The accomodation may be basic BUT the rest of the complex is far from it. Free cookie on check in, free coffee and tea anytime, free popcorn. There is also a full cafeteria in the basement that serves hot breakfast which is included in our room cost. Then there is the huge amount of common space and seating, lounges, rocking chairs, pool tables, a movie room etc. Amazing place.

Di asked the reception about breakfast arrangements and learned at the same time that the cafeteria downstairs does a $10 dinner deal too. Off we went to investigate - and that became our dinner. Yep, a bit lazy perhaps but we were not inspired by reviews (Yelp and TripAdvisor) of the locals eateries.

For $10 you get cafeteria food but plenty of it - bread, salad, main course (choice of chicken or beef), vegetables, pasta or baked potato to accompany the meat, a dessert and fountain drinks. It was all fiine.

The cafeteria, or should we call it a canteen because that is what it felt like, was not beautiful but we bet that our hot breakfast could see us through lunch tomorrow based on our dinner experience.

After dinner, we made ourselves comfortable in a pair of rocking chairs off the lobby and relaxed. It has been a humid day (more to come with 30 degrees or or so tomorrow) and we were happy staying cool and calm.

We retired early to our private room in the hostel. A bit more reading and emailing. Good night.

 

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