Episode Transcript
Welcome back to the Pass the Broccoli podcast. This is episode six continuing our Northeast travel series, and this week we are exploring Massachusetts So as we took the back way into the northeast, as we talked about in our Vermont section we made our way through New Hampshire, which comes out at the bottom of Maine and it's about 30 miles from Scarborough. So knowing us and how we love those Holy Donuts from our Maine series we actually made the trip up to Scarborough first and had some more Holy Donuts and visited the Chocolate Moose before heading and making our way down to Salem, Massachusetts. We wanted to visit Salem in October for obvious reasons, for the witches and Halloween And then when we got there, we went and saw a witch museum and attended one of those shows. Eh, it was a lame show. It wasn't that great. I would've thought these days you could use some more modern technology to make the show more engaging and better, but it was a typical show. I've not been there before, but it was an average show for that. Spent most of the day walking around the town of Salem. Saw a lot of black cats, believe it or not, we saw the "Bewitched" monument of E- of Elizabeth Montgomery from that show. We walked and saw the Witch City Mall. And we walked around there, and then we made our way to the House of the Seven Gables, which was pretty cool. My wife really liked that one. We didn't go in. The line was really long to get into that day, so we didn't go in there. Then we made our way down to the Salem Maritime National Historical Site. They had a- another ship on location there that we walked through that day, and then we visited a graveyard where the early witches were buried. It was spooky. Ironically enough, we didn't see no black cats around that graveyard, which I thought we might. But overall, our expectation for it, I thought it would be more scarier than it was. I think that Gary Numan concert was scarier than this. However, we were never there at the nighttime or in the nighttime, so maybe it's a different vibe, in October in nighttime, the lights and everything. But we were there mostly during the day. We did have our RV. We were traveling in an RV for this trip. There was not a lot of accommodations for RV traveling in Salem. I'm sure you could've found some places, here and there, but overall, to feel safe, we didn't find any places. So once we wrapped up the day there in Salem, we were heading towards Boston. We called and found a campground about 45 minutes south of Boston, which is on the, Salem is on the north of Boston. So we made our way through the Boston traffic that day at rush hour, unfortunately and got down to the KOA, which was near Plymouth. And there's a KOA campground. But the reason that we s- picked that one was it was, like, four miles from the T train station, which is the last stop that goes into Boston So we stayed there. The next day we got up and we went and got our tickets and went, took the T into Boston. It was about a 45-minute ride into Boston. We went by Gillette Stadium on our way in and we didn't have to deal with the traffic going in and out of Boston while we were there doing our exploration of Boston. So that was very convenient. And, to T comes into the same place that the Amtraks do in, in, I'm gonna call it Union Station, I don't remember what it's actually called. But it was the train station there right in the middle of downtown Boston. And we got off there and went in and kinda asking for directions. And it was kinda ironic and funny that the the Boston information, at the information table, how they asked my wife to talk again 'cause they loved her accent. And us from being from the South kinda chuckled that we have an accent. So that was kinda funny. But the first stop we made once we got out of there and got our bearings was we wanted to do the Freedom Trail. But first we wanted to see Cheers. So we made our way through through the initial part that we, about, that the Freedom Trail starts on, but we went on past that and went down maybe a mile longer and went to the Cheers bar. Took some pictures there, and there we had our first Boston chowder bowl, a local one. At that point we went and got some shirts and pictures and souvenirs from Cheers, and then we made our way up to the Massachusetts State House. So those were two attractions outside of the Freedom Trail that we did before we started. And then after that, we went back to that park where the Freedom Trail started, and then we were told it was only six miles. In reality, the Freedom Trail was more like 12 miles one way it felt like anyway. So we walked the Freedom Trail. On our way there we encountered Quincy's Market. We went through that and saw that. We didn't eat there. It was really pricey, and I believe you could get cheaper things elsewhere, maybe closer. We just were tourists and didn't know. But we did not eat at the Quincy Market. And then while we was walking the trail, there was a guided walking tour of the city. So we kinda crashed that, if you will, appended ourself to the back of the group and kinda was listening there. And where we did that at is where they were at the graveyard where Paul Revere was buried. So we kinda listened in on, on that and then then we disengaged ourself from that tour and made our way to the USS Constitution. Kinda went on the ship and did the tour of that ship, and then, we eventually made our way to the end of the Freedom Trail. There's a lot of cool attractions on there. You got a lot of monuments you walk by and historical buildings and things like that. So it, it was cool, but it was an exhausting trail if you're not used to walking a lot. After that, we made our way back down to the train station and went back for the day 'cause that was a long day walking that trail doing all those things, taking the pictures. We went back to the campground and relaxed for the rest of the day, made our dinner, and then the next morning we got up and repeated that. We would drive our van from the campground to the train station, park it there, get on the T, and go down into Boston and do our thing and come back and go back to the campground. So first day we did that, came back and ate, everything was good. Second day we did that, came down there and went back to Boston to do the other things outside of the Freedom Trail that we wanted to do. We actually did the Boston Tea Party. We did that tour and that show, and that was really good, professional. And this is where if you compare the technology of those shows to the one in Salem, you could tell Salem was really lacking, but we didn't know 'cause we had did that one first. And we threw, we threw the simulation of throwing the tea into the harbor. And then we walked the Boston Harbor in the downtown area, and that was really beautiful. The boats, the ships the upscale businesses and locations down there, it was really nice. And then we got back on the T to head back to the RV and go back to the campground. And on our way there You know, we were the last stop on the stop of maybe six stops from between Boston and where the camper was parked, our last stop. But two miles outside of the last stop, the train broke down. So we had to actually walk the track two miles to get to our train destination, to get back to our RV. So that was an eventful thing to happen that day. So and that kinda ended our City of Boston exploration that day. And then so we went back to the RV relaxed and stayed the night, and the next morning we got up and we headed to Plymouth. And this is where the Plymouth Rock is, and then while we were in Plymouth we visited the Mayflower ship, which was a replica. And then we went and saw the Plymouth Rock, and it was really small. It was like a normal rock. I think I could even pick it up. I was expecting a huge boulder, but it was really just a normal rock. And but it kinda let us down. The building around the rock was more profound than the rock itself. So just a hint for anyone who's going to Plymouth to see Plymouth Rock, have expectations of a normal rock. I, I'm surprised it wasn't a replica, but they said it was authentic. Then we visited a local wharf there and had dinner, and we got another clam chowder bowl like we did at Cheers, except this one was 100 times better compared to the one at Cheers. A lot more potatoes in there and it was at the Crabby Shack in Plymouth. So and then we also got a s- a seafood sampler there, and they were fabulous, both of them. Me and my wife could have shared the clam chowder bowl and still had stuff left over if we knew that in advance. But the portions were great and the chowder was supreme. Yeah, and then to wrap up our day in Plymouth we actually watched a local reenactment and that was our day in Plymouth. And really Plymouth is not a day. It's maybe three, four hours, depending on how much you wanna explore the ships and and watch these reenactments. So four hours max, I would say, for Plymouth. After that, we got in our RV and we headed to Cape Cod. So if you Go to Cape Cod. The signs say Cape Cod is X miles I'm gonna say 30 miles from where we were in Plymouth. So we did that, and we get there, and actually we're at the bottom of the Cape, and the Cape is 60 miles long. So to get to the very top of the Cape, you have to take that road and travel up that road 60 miles to get to the very tip where the amazing beaches are at the very top of it. See just great sunsets and all that. But on our way there, again, like we always say, in the RV world, the journey is the amazing part. It's not ne- not always the destination, but the journey to get there. And it, this was the same way at Cape Cod. The lighthouses, we stopped at several lighthouses along the way. We learned how they were moved or erected, and we actually did a tour of a couple of them. We actually walked up in them and did that, and that, those were really nice. So don't forget, if you're like, "Oh no, not 100 miles," but that journey to get there is you typically will find something that, that'll make it worth doing that. And it's, and they're usually off the beaten path and not on the map, and you just stumble upon them on your way to a milestone destination. I hope you'll tune in next time again, where we'll be exploring Rhode Island
