Women of Faith - Part 4

Typically when I go to Massachusetts it is to visit relatives. My parents grew up just south of Boston & my aunt & grandfather & miscellaneous cousins & other assundry relatives still live there. Needless to say it's been a LONG time since I did much exploring of Boston itself. I did go down about six or so years ago with a girlfriend & we did part of the Freedom Trail but we didn't stay in Boston.

For Women of Faith - we stayed right in Boston at the Boston Park Plaza hotel. It definitely had that "old" feel to it like it had been there for a really long time. We picked this hotel since there was a T-station just up the block - in site of the hotel. We arrived on Thursday evening only to find that it was CLOSED due to construction! ::sigh:: The next T-station was not that far away, but still, it was the principal of thing!

After getting directions the next morning we set off in the crowd of commuters to the T-station. What an experience. Now, I have to tell you. In the past few weeks my hubby told me I was a city girl at heart. Honey, I'm telling you right now, I am so NOT a city girl. I may not be as country as I like to think and I may be more of a "suburbs" type gal, but I am so not a city girl. Trust me.

Thank goodness Tammy travels a lot for her job & showed my sister & I the ins & outs of the T. We bought a "Charlie" card for the weekend & that was pretty painless. We even got back some of the new presidential dollar coins as change.

And of course, to prove we rode the T - we had to take photos. Whenever you travel with scrapbookers, plan for LOTS of photos to be taken!

Tammy & I
Tammy & Beth

Now the T ride that morning wasn't too bad. We didn't have to be to the Garden until about 10am. However, as the weekend progressed I was very happy to realize we would be driving in the next day!! But let me continue for a bit before I go in to that part....

The Friday pre-confernece was excellent as I have already talked about. It went from 10am to 3:30pm. The concierge at the hotel had told us it was about a 30 minute walk from the hotel to the Garden. We opted for the T that morning but thought we could easily walk back that afternoon. It was a bright sunny day & we could check out some of Boston. Hah! Famous last words.

We headed out & soon connected with the Freedom Trail. Now this is actually a really cool thing about Boston. So much of our country's freedom started right here in this port town. The city has put in a "red path" that you can follow & it will take you to all these historic places from Faneuil Hall to Paul Revere's House. We had grand ideas we'd see quite a bit on our walk back to the hotel. We were wrong.

We saw this behind the Old North Church.

The "fence" is actually lots & lots & lots of dog tags hanging.

We chose not to stand in yet another line to get in to see the inside of the church. It is beautiful in there & I highly recommend it. In fact, when we finally get around to studying American history here I'm planning to take my boys down & walk the whole trail checking it all out.

The statue of Paul Revere just down from the Old North Church.

As you can see we also made it to Paul Revere's house. I've been inside here before as well & it's again a neat place. You do have to pay to get in to some of these spots & this is on place you had to pay so we opted not to do this. A lot of them will also not allow photography or flash photography either. In fact, when I went to both the Old North Church & Paul Revere's house last time I just bought postcards with photos of the inside of both spots.

And of course, the North End isn't complete without cobblestone on the roads.

At this stage of the day I was getting hot & my blood sugar had dropped to about 70 which is the lowest normal number. We did find a CVS drugstore near here & I bought an apple juice that I completely drained in about five seconds. I felt better.

We got back on the T though at the Government Center & took that back to the hotel. We should have had about a three hour break before needing to be back for the start of the regular Women of Faith Conference that started back at 7pm. We had an hour. ::sigh:: I ended up taking a cool shower & completely changing my clothes. Did I mention it had been a warm day?

So - back to the T rides...

The conference Saturday night was just as great, but many women only come in for the main conference (Friday night & Saturday). There were hundreds and hundreds and thousands and thousands of women there. I think most needed the Green Line out of the Garden. This was the first time all day we had to wait more than five minutes for the T. They sent an entirely empty train just for us. I even got a seat as did Tammy but Beth stood next to her. Oh my - here's where my neurosis started to show. At the next stop we had more people get on the already completely full train! Whatever happened to personal space?? Yikes!

This continued at each stop. Very few people were getting off but many were pushing to get on. I rarely saw anyone look at how full the train was & not try to get on - it happened - but VERY infrequently. I kid you not - by the time we did get off - about 30 minutes later - I could feel myself shaking. I do not like closed spaces & I certainly did NOT like all those strangers in my personal space! Phew!

We drove to the Garden the next morning & paid way less for parking there than we had for the two days at the hotel (wow!!!). We even got out to the highway without any issue & headed down to my aunt's house for the remainder of Saturday night.

It was a great weekend spent with friends.

Oh & before I forget...my brother asked about the lines to the bathroom. Can you tell he's been married a while?? ::grin:: They actually "converted" all men's room on the Concourse to women's bathrooms except for one. Of course, they only had three stalls in them compared to the eight or so in the women's bathroom. I started sneaking out a few minutes before breaks so I wouldn't have to wait in line. Then about mid-way on Saturday we discovered by going down just one floor there was another set of bathrooms there that most of the women had not discovered yet so the lines were either non-existent or very short!