Trip details: Massachusetts and New England

This is the first in a series of posts about our recent trip to New England, England, and Wales.

We spent the night before we left in the Doubletree Hotel at Sea-Tac, so we could get a couple of hours extra sleep. We left the house Friday at about 5:30PM (when a jacket I'd ordered for the trip arrived), and got to the hotel at about the same time as a busload of elderly tourists just off a cruise to Alaska pulled in. After standing in line for a while, we got checked in (they handed out warm chocolate-chip cookies to those of us in the lobby!), found out that the first shuttle to the airport in the morning was at 5AM, and successfully navigated ourselves to our room (the hotel is HUGE and has several different buildings).

The room was nice, but somewhere I've stayed in one that was IDENTICAL to this. I've never stayed in this hotel before, and I don't recall staying in a Doubletree before either. It was weird. We ate dinner in the hotel & found out our server had gone to church about a mile from where we live.

The next morning, we got up at about 4:15 and got on the shuttle, which left a few minutes after 5. It was when we pulled up to the airport and got in line to check ourselves in for our flight (to Denver) that I realized that our flight left at 5:50, not 6:15, and that we had only about 35 minutes to make it. I broke into a huge sweat.

The check-in kiosk said that we were too late. More sweat. The lady behind the kiosk told us that our luggage wouldn't make it. Fortunately, we had carry-ons, so we hurried to security. Of course, since we were in a hurry, both Carrie's bag (with a too-large bottle of something) and mine (spare camera batteries and a voltage converter for the UK) were selected for extra scrutiny. More sweat.

We got to the gate just as they were starting to close the doors. Whew!

Uneventful flight to Denver. Uneventful layover in Denver (bought breakfast there, since there was no breakfast on the flight), and an uneventful flight to Boston. We grabbed our bags, got off the plane, and walked to baggage claim, from where Carrie was going to call her sister Michelle. I took the opportunity to use the men's room. When I came back, Michelle and Joe (her husband) were there. It turns out that they had been sitting about 25 feet from where Carrie called, and she actually heard their phone ringing!

It was raining so we thanked Joe & Michelle for arranging weather to make us feel at home.

They got us out of the airport, out of Boston, and to their home in Georgetown, MA. Nice place - on a pond just outside of a charming, picturesque New England village. We stayed in their 5th wheel trailer. Very nice, but short.

The next day, Michelle took Carrie to a baby shower for Michelle's daughter-in-law. I wasn't particularly looking forward to that. Fortunately, neither was Joe, so we went to a gigantic outdoors place called the Kittery Trading Post, in Kittery Maine. On the way, I got to see the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, and I can now say that I've been in three more states (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine). We ate lunch at a roadside seafood place - I had a lobster roll for the first time. Tasty!

The next day (I lost track of what day it was, but I think this was Monday the 31st of August), Michelle accompanied Carrie & me into Boston for a look around. She drove us to a nearby town and we took the commuter train into Boston. I really didn't know what I wanted to see (aside from the Green Monster, which wasn't possible, and Old North Church), so when we saw a kiosk selling tickets to a hop-on, hop-off Boston bus tour, we took that. Except for Fenway Park, we got to see all the big sights: Faneuil Hall, Quincy Market, Boston Garden, the scene of the Boston Massacre, the scene of the Boston tea-party (now a children's museum with a huge inflatable "Arthur the Aardvark" marking the spot!), and we also got to go on a 45-minute harbor tour (from which we saw Bunker Hill, Old North Church, and Old Ironsides, which isn't open for tours on Mondays). The day was kinda cool and cloudy so Carrie & Michelle bought long-sleeve souvenir t-shirts.

We had lunch at the Union Oyster House, the oldest continually-operating restaurant in the US (since 1820). Pretty good food. Sam Adams Octoberfest on tap.

Monday was our last day with Joe & Michelle. They drove us around their part of Massachusetts. First we went to an antique store in Georgetown (a great place, with some very nice hand-made furniture, and where I spent much time drooling over three matching leaded-glass windows and Carrie bought a lace tablecloth for her carriecards booth). Then it was on to Ipswich and another antique store, this one overpriced and understocked. After that, we went up the coast to Gloucester (pronounced "Glahstuh"), home of Gorton's seafood and a locally famous statue. Our final destination was Rockport. No, not Rockport, Maine; Rockport, Massachusetts, a charming little former fishing village on the coast. We wandered around Rockport for a couple of hours, and then headed back to Joe & Michelle's to pack for the rest of the trip.

We had a great time with Joe & Michelle. I'd been told that Joe is quite the raconteur, and everyone was right. What a great guy! He knows absolutely everyone in Georgetown.

Next post: London