New England Road Trip - Day Two - Boston, MA

Boston or Bust!

Our second day was spent in Boston. The weather was out of its nasty rainy funk and it was beautiful out. Perfect day for doing the tourist thing in the City of Boston. Our hotel was about 40 minutes away and I was again stressing about Gabriel and the car. Overall this leg of the trip went well. We didn't hit any traffic and were able to get to our parking garage without much of a problem.

The parking garage was right next to Faneuil Hall. We went in and walked around the museum. Leah enjoyed looking at the uniforms from the American Revolutionary War and other memorabilia from their collection.  

 

 

We walked from Faneuil Hall to the New England Aquarium.  Leah was looking forward to seeing the variety of penguins.

We also saw one of the 3D movies, Sharks 3D at the IMAX Theater. Louis tolerated the movie for about 20 minutes or so and I left with him to play outsid while Leah enjoyed it in its entirety.

We grabbed a quick snack and headed back to the Faneuil Hall Marketplace to start off our journey on the Freedom Trail. 

The Rings Fountain is a lot of fun. I hope we can be back in Boston during the Summer and fully enjoy it. 

 Didn't stop Leah from running through it, or me for that matter. She lucked out and didn't get wet. I was soaked.

 Matt running through with Louis

 

 They made it without a single drop on them

 We stopped to watch a street performer outside Faneuil Hall.

We followed the Freedom trail towards Boston Common and the Public Garden. I'd say right around this point we were all losing a bit of steam and on the verge of crankiness.

 I wasn't kidding when I've said our Graco stroller is a work horse. We spent the entire day and part of the evening in Boston. We had everything we could possibly need for the kids with us. We also had our umbrella stroller for Louis.

 Nothing like a stop at the playground in Boston Common (America's first park) let the kids out to get everyone back on track.

 At the Public Garden (First public botanical garden) at the Make Way for Ducklings bronze sculpture. The book Make Way for Ducklings is the official children's book for Massachusetts. It takes place in Boston Common.

We left the Public Garden and instead of heading back the way we came I decided we'd back a different way. I wanted to head through Chinatown and then walk back. I should have known better. Chinatown- no matter is what city? ALWAYS and I mean ALWAYS gets me turned around. It's happened in NYC (not anymore after years of learning the ins & outs), San Francisco (not even going to get into that fiasco), Portland, Houston, Toronto, Vancouver and Detroit. Clearly I need to learn to read Chinese. Any dialect will do.

We had no shortage of maps but the streets split a few times and follow the same names in 3 different directions. 20 minutes of wandering around I finally figured out where we were and how to get back. Weren't out of sorts for long but it was enough to put everyone into a cranky mood. We were hungry mostly and tired.

Needless to say we were all happy to get back to Faneuil Hall and to visit the food stalls at the Quincy Market. There are so many choices it was hard to decide. I ended up with an absolutely delicious bowl of New Englad Clam Chowder (typical I know) and Leah & Matt got some of the best tasting mac n cheese. Leah had chicken and I think Matt had buffalo chicken. They had a lobster mac n cheese I am STILL thinking about. Definite must have. I also had a Sam Adams on tap which hit the spot.

Overall I'd say we had a great time in Boston. We managed to see a lot of the sites and the kids had a great time. We were all ready to crash when we made it back to the hotel.

New England Road Trip- Day One - Mystic, CT

After our successful somewhat impromptu trip to New Orleans for Mardi Gras back in February I decided to plan another trip for us. Gabriel is still pretty new so we decided to stay closer to home. New England has a lot of options for families so we went with a New England Road Trip as our next family vacation.

Like with our trip to New Orleans I made a loose itinerary based on places to visits. There were places we would venture out to and then smaller stops/other things to do if we had the time and/or energy for them. Traveling with children isn't always the easiest thing to do if you want to pack everything into a trip. I figure a few highlights and fun stops for them is the way to go. I always plot local eateries into our trips as well.

The one concern we had was Gabriel. Gabriel hates the car. The minute he hits the car safety seat it's full on crying. We don't go out much these days for more than a 15 minute car ride because of it. The past few days we've seen a slight improvement so we took the chance. Perhaps not the smartest decision to make but it was the one we made. Going along with our "this is a trip for the kids, not just with the kids" attitude I planned for extra stops along the way if we needed to.

Our first stop was Mystic, CT. If you think Connecticut you may think "Oh that doesn't seem to far." Well it is. (Not really, our destination was only 3 hours from home) Especially when you have a newborn, a toddler and a school age child in a sedan. Fortunately Leah and Louis are great car travelers. We headed for Mystic Seaport. The weather started off a bit overcast and there was a chance of light rain in the forecast. A good seafarer weather day.

Gabriel handled the ride pretty well until the last 20-30 minutes. I've never been happier to get some place before.

Mystic Seaport is a recreation of a 19th Century seafaring village, complete with homes, businesses and collections of sailing ships and boats. More than 60 of the buildings on the property are original and have been restored to their old glory.

After this photo was taken we bumped into pseudo reality tv star Kourtney Kardashian with her son. Her son and Louis share the same birthday. She had camera crews with her. We forgot ours at home. :D

We left Mystic Seaport for Downtown Mystic hoping I could stop a local restaurant and have some lunch and walk around the town. This did not go according to plan. As we made it to Downtown Mystic we found that 2 of the municipal parking lots were full of contruction workers tearing up the streets along the way. It was difficult to get around and at this point Gabriel began to cry because he was hungry so we scrapped the search for parking and headed back towards Mystic Seaport where I knew there was a McDonald's near by. I am not proud of how much crap food we eat while on our trips but at times like this? I'm happy for whatever works. I sat in the car and nursed Gabriel while Matt grabbed some food with the kids.

Our next stop was The Dinosaur Place in Oakdale, Connecticut. By the time we reached our destination it became quite clear by the ominous clouds creeping up around us that rain was on its way. Still we decided to tour the Dinosaur Place. The latter? Pretty much makes us a crazy family I think. I don't know why we thought we'd beat the rain! So we paid and in we went. Within 10 minutes it was pouring out. Still we had a good time. In some ways it was a bit how I imagine walking around the prehistoric ages would've been like.

The ride to the hotel was uneventful even though the downpour worsened at this point. Our hotel was located in Foxboro, Massachusetts, home of the Patriots. We booked a one bedroom suite and when we got to the hotel found out management had upgraded us to a 2 bedroom suite. Perfect for us! Louis and Matt took one room while Leah, Gabriel and myself stayed in the other one.We had 2 bathrooms w/showers & tubs. A full service kitchen w/fridge, dishwasher and microwave. I packed us enough drinks and snacks for the trip (and then some) so the fridge came in handy. My favorite feature? The ice maker.

Our first night we winded down, watched Alice in Wonderland (Burton) and went to sleep (Louis as you can see in the photo knocked out as soon as he hit the bed), ready for our early morning.