East Coast road trip
This week we went on a big trip out to the East Coast. Mitchell kicked things off with a nap after work, and then we got a lift to the airport. Our flight was overnight so we both tried to sleep for the duration, with varying degrees of success.
We landed in New York at 7:30am and our bag was the first one out on the baggage reclaim carousel! We got the shuttle to the car rental place and got our car the for the next three days. It wasn't as exciting as the last one, but this little white Hyundai served us very well on the trip.
We drove out of the city through a very quiet Sunday morning Manhattan, and out into Connecticut. After a couple of hours we stopped at Mystic (the inspiration behind the 80's movie Mystic Pizza!) and saw the pizza place, a little bookstore and walked along the docks where there were a few little boats and an older pirate looking ship. It was very cold and windy that day, but we had some lunch and kept going.
We arrived in Salem in the afternoon and checked into our hotel. It was on the waterfront and all blue and nautical themed. We had a shower after our long journey and then ordered room service for dinner and had an early night.
In the morning, we were up early to explore Salem. We started by walking around the harbour and visiting the Derby Wharf Light Station and seeing some boats. Apparently April is the off season in the North East, so a lot of things were closed until June and lots of boats all along the coast were wrapped up for the winter.
We then went to go and see the "Witch House" which was a house owned by a judge of the Salem witch trials and is very old and typical looking of the historic Salem area. We didn't go inside, but did look at the outside. We then went continued along the historic street to see the public library and some more houses.
After that, we stopped in a cafe for some breakfast.
The next thing to see was the witch museum. There are a lot of museums in Salem, all offering something slightly different, but we decided it was best to see just one while we were there. We chose the Witch History Museum because we walked past it first. It was a little guided tour around some exhibits, telling the story of the Salem Witch trials. It was very interesting and we learnt that the witches here were hanged and not burnt, and that they weren't buried in church cemeteries, not because they had committed a crime against God, but because they had broken the law by being witches.
We also popped into some shops on our way. Some were gift shops and some offered psychic readings or aura photographs. I bought a crystal necklace made of black sandstone (so it's black and sparkly) from one.
We also went to visit the Witch trials memorial which had the names of all those punished for being witches in 1692. It was right next to a little cemetery, and this had some very old gravestones inside.
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| The other witch museum |
After the light started to come back, we went back to the car and headed off for our next destination.
This next stop was less than two hours away, even though we went from Massachusetts, through New Hampshire and into Maine. As soon as we drove into New Hampshire, there were big signs saying "liquor store - open on Sundays" so we guessed there was some sort of restriction in these neighbouring states!
When we got to Maine there were "Moose Crossing" signs and signs about how to safely drive your snow plow. We did see some big piles of snow on the way, even in the first week of April.
Our hotel was in Portland and it had some very confusing valet parking as the only option, but we made it and checked in. That evening we went out for dinner at a place just across the road, which was very nice, but Mitchell's was very very spicy.
We played a little video game together and then turned in. In the morning, the hotel provided a breakfast buffet, including a make your own waffle station.
Fed, we headed out for a little walk around the city. It seemed very nice, but very much a working city, with not much tourism. We did walk through the historical and the arts district which had a lot of record and antique shops, and then down to the harbour where there were lots and lots of lobster boats.
We also saw some information plaques about the underground railroad and Portland's role in shipping people who had arrived from the South across to Canada.
After seeing the city, we were then on to our main reason for coming all the way up to Maine - the lighthouses!
The first one turned out to be on a community college campus, which made the parking a little confusing, but we worked it out and then went for a very windy scramble along the rocks and out to the lighthouse. It was very lovely weather (for an area North of some parts of Canada) and the blue skies made the lighthouses look beautiful.
Our next one was only a few minutes away, but was in a big park. This was a very iconic lighthouse and quite a few people were there to take pictures. I climbed down to make sure I could say I'd touched the water on both sides of the continent, and then we too got some pictures.
We walked for a bit further to see some more of the coastline, which I imagine would look even lovelier in the summer when it's all green.
Lighthouse expedition complete, we got back in the car and headed back down to Massachusetts. We stopped for a sandwich and a smoothie on the way and arrived in Plymouth in the late afternoon.
We had time to do our exploring of this city that day, so we went out to find the tourist spots of the first landing site of the pilgrims. There was meant to be a Mayflower II boat, built exactly the same as the first passenger boat to the Americas, but again, it was the off season so it wasn't open, but we thought we'd be able to just see it from the outside. As we got closer, we couldn't see anything and it turned out it had been moved for maintenance. And where had it been taken? Mystic, the town we'd stopped in two days ago. The pirate ship we'd seen when we were there may well have been the Mayflower II!
We did, however, get to the Plymouth Rock, a rock which has been designated as the first stepping stone for those people (passengers and slaves) who made that very first journey across the Atlantic.
We saw a little film crew while we were looking at it, and they asked if we'd be interested in being interviewed! I said yes and talked a little about the 1619 project, which is an idea to make 1619 (the date of this first landing) the beginning of the country instead of 1776 (the revolutionary war).
We saw a few other little statues and then started to look for places for dinner. There were lots of Taverns and pizza places, but then we walked past a place which looked very interesting. It was decorated like a 18th century farmhouse, with little yellow curtains and murals on the walls. They had a veggie burger on the menu so we stopped in. It was a very weird vibe inside, welcoming, but definitely strange. We did some googling after and turns out that the group that runs it is definitely a cult. No one gets paid to work there, but they all live together in an adjoining house and drink a lot of yerba mate.
That was an interesting experience, and being in a seaside town on the off-season also added to the slightly odd vibes of the town, but we did enjoy it. It was very much like an English seaside town, and the beach side cafe we went to for breakfast looked just like somewhere you'd go to in Norfolk.
That was it for our little East Coast road trip, and we set off early to return to car to New York. I'm working on part II which will have the details of the New York portion of our holiday!
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