Providence Day Three: Lost in Boston

Paul Revere lived in this house, with his sixteen children (by two wives. The first died in childbirth after giving birth to eight, so Paul remarried and had eight more). It's the oldest wood residence in Boston.

The Boston Massacre occurred right here, next to the old City Hall. Across the street, they had the meeting where they decided to throw the tea in the harbor.



The families lying here in Copp's Hill predate the revolution by as much as a hundred years. It sits on a bluff above the Charles River, across which Paul Revere was rowed so he could get to his horse and begin to warn the people about the upcoming English sea attack on Charlestown. Charlestown was known as a nasty place, with the three plagues of "woolves, rattle-snakes and moskee-tos."



Before BZWZ came to Brown, Plot never realized Providence is really just an outlying suburb of Boston. The proof: you find Craig's List postings for Providence on the Boston page.

P and D caught the 9:40 train (barely -- running through the train station which is mercifully very small with only one track heading North) and were in Boston by 10:45. What a city for walkers, though the streets are so convoluted you can't go one block without being turned backwards. (Actually, Plot and Duck were theoretically never lost in Boston, they just never knew where they were.) The first walk of the day was through beautiful Beacon Hill, once the free black section of Boston, now Georgetown-like, with it's collection of narrow cobbled paths and brick homes c. 1800.








After the walking tour ended at The Old North Church (which is perhaps the most fascinating historical part of the tour), from whose steeples the church sexton briefly hung two lanterns to alert Charlestown to an imminent English sea landing, Plot and Duck continued walking across the Charles River bridge and up to the Bunker Hill Monument. Bunker Hill is now, after centuries of gentrification and home building, little more than a rise, but in 1775 the American Patriots gave the English the worst beating they'd ever get in all the revolution.

Later, Commander Howe of the English troops holed up in Boston, made a deal with General Washington, who had now taken command of the American troops occupying the high ground across from the city, that if Washington allowed the English to evacuate Boston by sea they would not burn the city down. Both generals kept the deal, and this is why so many old buildings still exist in Boston today.

That was a lot of walking. Fortunately, you can take a ferry from the foot of Bunker Hill back to the city. It was 5 o'clock and the sun had long disappeared. The view of Boston night skyscape was really pretty.

Plot and Duck were back to Providence by 6:45 and then out to dinner with BZ and Ben-Z at a restaurant where the food choices looked...good, and it all tasted...interesting.

Cooking at home tonight.