On July 29, 2018, I headed down to Boston, Massachusetts (USA) for a day trip. This was the shortest out-of-state trip I’d ever taken – only about eight hours there! It takes about 2.5 hours via train from Portland, Maine. I went down with a sorority sister to show her Boston for the first time. My brother also currently attends the Massachusetts Institute of Technology so of course I wanted to stop by there!
Boston is the most populated city in New England (which consists of six states: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut) with around 700,000. It’s an extremely historic city, which is one of the many reasons I love it! I actually lived in Boston for almost three months during the summer of 2016 for an internship.
Major events from the American Revolution, like the Boston Massacre, Boston Tea Party, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Siege of Boston all occurred here. There’s something called the Freedom Trail which is a 2.5 mile path through downtown Boston and covers 16 significant locations. It’s been established since the early 1950s and is marked by red brick to guide you through the trail. The sites are:
- Boston Commons
- Massachusetts State House
- Park Street Church
- Granary Burying Ground
- King’s Chapel and Burying Ground
- Benjamin Franklin statue and former site of Boston Latin School
- Old Corner Bookstore
- Old South Meeting House
- Old State House
- Site of the Boston Massacre
- Faneuil Hall
- Paul Revere House
- Old North Church
- Copp’s Hill Burying Ground
- USS Constitution
- Bunker Hill Monument
The last two sites bring you into Charlestown and is a longer part of the walk, so we stuck with the downtown sites. Here are some highlights from that:
Next stop was over the Charles River to Cambridge, a city bordering Boston which is home to schools such as Harvard and MIT. We stopped by MIT to visit my brother who is a physics student. We stopped by his dorm and a few buildings, and I was able to snag a photo before we left. Here we are in front of the Great Dome:
Next, I took some time to take in the beauty of the Charles River and have some mindful time before taking the train home!
