Boston 2008 - Day 4 - August 7 - Big and DUUUUUUUUMB!

Dunkin Donuts coffee and pastry for breakfast. Long-ish walk to Boylston & St. Charles to catch the tour to Salem. We're across the street from Boston Common, so now we know how far it is to the start of the Freedom Trail.

On our way to Salem, via Marblehead. Stopped at Castle Rock to see the ocean (quite warm for this far north) and the Carcassone Castle. This whole area is beautiful and quaint, even if the crummiest house is priced at well over $1,000,000 - yowza! Professional dog walkers and rich socialites everywhere. The US Navy originated here, by the way.

Salem is nuts! Beautiful and you have to eat at Brother's Deli - hugest sandwiches ever! The witch museum is interesting and nice. Plenty of misc. crap to buy, especially for halloween. The Common is HUGE for the size of town this is. We got separated from the rest of the tour so our driver, Bob, took us over to see the statue of Samantha from Bewitched. She was given to Salem a few years ago. No one else on the tour got to see that...shhh! Bough the pups some collar charms at Pickering Wharf and tons of candy at Ye Olde Pepper Companie, the oldest candy company in America. They also make their own soda so we got cream soda and birch beer. It's the first time I've ever said "one of everything please" and MEANT IT! WOO HOO!

Got back to Boston and walked through some misting rain through Copley back to the hotel. Rested for a bit before getting dressed up to hit the town! Dinner at Legal Sea Foods - the had a dish with everything I wanted all at once! Crab cakes, shrimp and scallops - perfect! Todd had grilled tuna steak which was also very good. Took our time enjoying dinner until we stepped outside the Prudential Center to take a picture for the start of the Olympics. Then -- to the Top of the Hub for dessert and coffee! Lovely view, great live jazz and excellent dessert, but our server was NOT good and was kind of rude. Would have thought it would be better considering we dropped $45 on dessert.

But on the whole, a perfect day!

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Notes from after the trip:
* The title comes from a couple that was on the tour that could not, for the life of them, tell the bus driver where they needed to be at the end of the day. Critical information, given that Bob the Bus Driver was taking every single person on the bus back to their respective hotels. Sheesh. *If you go to Brother's Deli, definitely get a cheese steak sandwich...but split it with someone...it's freakin' HUGE! The place is set up quasi-cafeteria style so it's kind of fun and funky.
*I pretty much could have stayed in Marblehead all day and been okay with it.
*Our Olympics picture is part of a Facebook thing where you're supposed to take a picture at the exact time the Olympics started which, for us, was August 7 (yes 7, not 8...gotta love the int'l date line!) at 8:08pm...Boston is exactly 12 hours behind Beijing, in case you were terribly curious.