Good to be Home!

OK, so its been a little while since I've updated my blog - many of you know I recently moved into a new role with my company, which will put me on the road a little more than I've been used to. This month I've already been to Montreal and Boston, each for about a week, but now I'm home for about 3 weeks before I have to go away again so thats good!

I had an extra half day in Boston before coming home so I took a little time to walk around and see the sites - I walked the entire Freedom Trail, a marked path that takes you by a bunch of the historic sites around town - I took about 100 pictures and then, inevitably, lost my camera on the last day... :(

Luckliy for you, however, most of the pictures of the historic stuff can be found pretty easily on the internet! So no, I didn't take these pictures myself, but you wouldn't be able to tell the difference if I had... (not only have the buildings not really changed much, but since almost everyone takes pictures from the marked trail, the angles are probably about the same too).

Of course I won't be able to show you the incognito (I think this nut may have come after ME if he'd seen me taking his picture) pics I took of a crazy guy in a suit throwing rocks at the birds at the harbor :) That guy was bonko!

This was an old and somewhat macabre tombstone in the Granary Burial Ground, which is where Paul Revere is buried (see next pic). I think this was the oldest or one of the oldest stones in the cemetery...


Paul Revere's Tomb...

This is the Old State House and Boston's oldest public building, built in 1713. The Declaration of Independence was first read to the public from the balcony on the front on July 18th, 1776.

This is the Old South Meeting House. This is the place, in the years leading up to the Revolution, that Bostonians gathered to gripe about taxes and representative government and not wanting to have to drive on the wrong side of the road and what not, and it's where Samuel Adams gave the signal that started the Boston Tea Party. Obviously he felt beer a much better alternative...

Also, Ben Frankin was baptised here...


This is the USS Constitution, memorably nicknamed "Old Ironsides." I got a really good shot of a cross-section of the hull construction that was pretty cool but I couldn't find that one on the webb... basically it has about 6 inches of oak on the outside, a core of oak frames about 12x24" wide beneath that, and another internal layer of 6" oak after that... actually I'm not sure iron would have weighed much less. They had samples of the oak used for construction as well as the fir used for the decking - equal sample sizes but the oak weighed at least 2-3 times as much... that they ever even got that thing to float is incredible...