9th Jan

Today we walked the Boston freedom trail.

It is a 2.5 mile walk that is quite literally drawn on the ground as a red line for tourists to follow (either as red bricks sunk into the pavement or occasionally a stripe of red paint). It takes in 16 historical sites (mostly about beating the dastardly English!) and is a really nice way to get a feel for some of the city.

We stopped along the way to have a look at Paul Revere's house (concluding that he was very good at self promotion rather than particularly important to the revolution) and had a look around the USS Constitution - a frigate warship launched in 1797 which bristled with up to 60 guns and required a crew of around 500 in her heyday.

It was also the day of my introduction to American football. We skipped the very last bit of the freedom trail in order to watch the Green Bay Packers play the Philadelphia Eagles.



The Packers won and now I know the rules I can see the potential for getting quite hooked. One complaint though - a 60 minute game takes 3.5 hours to complete! That's quite a commitment if you're a dedicated fan. And I've now seen so many TV adverts that I'm feeling a weird compulsion to eat about 10 kilos of junk food, buy an enormous car and insure myself against pretty much everything (for some reason there are tons of ads for insurance policies on American TV - as well as the perennial ones for food and trucks).

Finally, to mop up nearly 4 hours worth of drinking we headed to the Massachusetts institution that is Legal Seafoods for an enormous but very tasty dinner.