Family Vacation 2013 Part 3 - From Maine to Wisconsin!

I'm sitting here feeding Liam his breakfast (he eats almost everything by himself, but oatmeal notsomuch), and decided it's a good time to put out the third and final installment of our family vacation adventures.

We got most of our packing done Thursday evening - it was so nice to put clean, folded clothes into the suitcases instead of trying to separate what was left clean from the mass of dirty laundry!  Wednesday morning, we finished up the last few things and headed out, leaving my parents to a day of peace and quiet.

From the moment we hit the east coast and I remember Tim Horton's, I wanted to make sure we stopped there once while we were out there.  So Wednesday morning breakfast it was!

The coffee was good but I was disappointed in their selection.  (I miss Caribou *sniff sniff*.)  The food was pretty good but a tad overpriced for having to feed a family of six.  Still, it's something I've wanted to try literally for at least 10 years, so I got that out of my system.

And then we were off to Boston!

We started off by driving all over the city, looking for a specific parking garage near the USS Constitution, because I knew that would be one main thing Randy would want to see while  we were there.  We finally found the parking garage, after a fascinating driving tour of modern and historical Boston.  We spent a good amount of time looking at the Constitution and the other sights in the harbor, including the museum gift shop, where I got each of the kids the Freedom Trail book that lists and discusses all the sights along the Freedom Trail.

Two views of the USS Constitution:

The cityscape from the harbor:

Cannons from WWII:

The kiddos:

Upon leaving the harbor, we decided to take the pedicabs across the bridge.  That was quite the experience.

Once we disembarked from the pedicabs, we decided to take the alternate trail, since the main trail was packed with tourists.  Some of the highlights were the Old North Church, the Copp's Hill Burial Ground, and a lot of old buildings.  We walked what WAS the shoreline in 1775, which is now several main streets and even juts up into the city farther down.  

It was very cool for the kids to see some things they have studied this semester in US History, particularly the Revolution, which is what we focused on during the last couple of months of school.  

Compared to everything there, I felt like we saw very little, though we were in the city for several hours.  It's definitely a trip we will have to take again!




Wednesday night, we stayed in a hotel in Swansea, MA, 20 minutes from the Providence airport.  The kids enjoyed having the hotel pool to themselves all evening, and everyone slept well and rose early to head to the airport.


We had an almost 3 hour layover in Cleveland, and once we hit Milwaukee, we had to take a shuttle out to where we had left our car.  Then we had a 30 minute drive home.  By the time we pulled into our garage, it had been a very long day of travel.  I, for one, was very glad to be home in my own bed with my own pillow :-).