2022-10-28 16:01:53 -04:00
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---
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title: "New England"
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date: 2022-10-28T16:01:10-04:00
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draft: true
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2022-10-30 11:29:36 -07:00
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categories: ["Travel"]
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locations:
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- Scituate, MA
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- Boston, MA
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- Massachusettes
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- Portland, ME
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- Maine
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- United States
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tags:
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- Friends
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- Family
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2022-10-28 16:01:53 -04:00
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---
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2022-10-30 11:29:36 -07:00
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For the second year in a row, a group of high school friends of mine have
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planned a trip together for a week in October. Last year, I wrote about [our
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trip to the Pacific Northwest][pnw]. This year, we decided on a trip to New
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England, splitting our time between Boston and an AirBnb an hour up the Maine
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coast from Portland. Our group is a bit different this year -- a couple people
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couldn't make it, another joined for the first time, and happily {{< tess >}}
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was able to come along too.
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## Scituate
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Tess and I left a few days before the trip started so we could travel down to
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Scituate, her hometown, to visit her family and show me around her childhood
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haunts. It's a charming coast New England town, full of history and [deep
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connections to Ireland][ssiht] on account of its many Irish and Irish-descended
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residents.
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{{< photo "2022/10/scituate-light" >}}
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## Boston
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The first part of the friends' trip was a few days in Boston. We stated in
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Somerville and explored downtown Boston via the MBTA. We spent a full day
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exploring the city on foot. Tess played tour guide for the other nine of us -- a
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part (I think) she relishes and (I believe) does exceptionally well. We also
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checked out the Isabella Stewart Garnder museum, a bizarre and fascinating
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house-turned-museum, and the site of the highest-value unsolved heist in the
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world.
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{{< photo "2022/10/gardner-museum" >}}
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Our second day in Boston, we took the ferry to Salem, MA. Salem is totally
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overrun with tourists during October each year because of its history as the
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site of the famous [Salem Witch Trials][salem-witch-trials]. We took the ferry
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from Boston, visited the museum there and wandered around town for an afternoon.
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It's a cute little town that really capitalizes on that witchy history. I
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imagine the fulltime residents have a variety of feelings about how intense the
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tourism gets this time of year.
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In Boston, we rented two cars and drove the ten of us north, through Portsmouth,
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New Hampshire, and Freeport, Maine -- stopping at the L.L. Bean flagship store on
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the way -- to a rental house on Casco Bay.
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## Maine
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[pnw]: {{< ref "blog/2021/10/pnw-reunion-trip" >}}
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[ssiht]: https://ssirishtrail.org
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[salem-witch-trials]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials
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