#Boston The Three Tenners.

At the start of a Three Tenners Tour ! The Three Tenners ? My brother's Rob and Mike and myself - ha !

We landed in Boston Massachusetts yesterday. In a couple of days we start a train journey to San Francisco on the Amtrak Californian Zephyr train via various stopovers we have planned. First stop Chicago.

The trip will be essentially sightseeing I guess but we have a number of activities planned including bike rides and trail walking over our various stopovers. However the main selling point was the prospect of crossing the USA east to west. Years ago we cycled across England together. The start was signalled by dipping our back wheel in the Irish Sea and the finish - our front wheel in the North Sea. Our version on this trip was a (very cold) dip in Atlantic ocean at Boston's Carson beach and we hope to finish with a Pacific ocean swim when we get to San Francisco ( touchwood!).

First time to Boston for us. We are only here for a couple of nights so our objectives have to be time limited. Just a flavour - including the flavour of their beers ! I sign us up for a 3 HR guided walking tour along what Boston markets as the Freedom Trail. It was excellent with a very engaging and passionate guide who was well into his history of Boston ! He said he had enough researched material for a 12 HR talk. I reckon we got at least 6 hrs worth in 3 hrs. 

In nutshell the people of Boston and Boston strategically played a leading part in settling in what became the USA and particularly the ousting of the British colonialists in what is termed the American Revolution. We walked the sites - Boston Common - the centrepiece of the settlement - the Boston Tea Party, the Boston Massacre, the Battle of Bunker Hill and the burial place of John Devere.

I am not qualified or have the time to set out an account of what happened in these famous moments in British colonial/American history - our guide of 10 yes experience took 3hrs of rapid talking as I have said !

But a quick summary. Boston Common - the first public park in America with a 350 year history. It has seen so much action and was the first settling point of the English Puritan colonisers. It is now a very attractive park. On my last early morning I jogged around it. It was quiet and peaceful. I had a sense of history which felt pretty special. One for the memory bank.

The Boston Tea Party. Britain was struggling to get taxes paid by the Bostonian settlers. The event was a political protest. It took place is 1773. Protesters dumped 340 crates of highly valuable tea from China into Boston harbour. The protest was against the East India Trading Company who owned the tea and controlled the tea market and taxes on it - as agents for the British king - the hapless George 3rd. It was an international incident which caused the British to invade again and eventually lose.

The Boston Massacre was overstated. 5 protesters killed by British Redcoats. An angry mob had threated the Redcoats after Redcoat had hit a boy with his musket for being disrespectful to the name of the British king. The massacre was exaggerated to unite the settlers against the British.

The Battle of Bunker Hill. A famous and significant battle which showed the ingenuity of the settlers. Despite the British winning the Battle of Bunker Hill they took far more casualties and were shaken to the core as was fundamental in changing the mindset of the British in eventually conceding America was lost.

Then finally Paul Revere - made famous by Longfellow's Midnight Ride Poem. He warned against the British attack. There is (according to our guide) much romancing about Revere's actual role on the fateful night but said guide sees no problem as regarding Revere as very significant, talented and important in the emergence of Boston and therefore America.

Enough now - I am getting carried away - ha! Unfortunately I have too much time - on The Lakeshore 49 - longest leg of our journey - Boston to Chicago along Lake Eerie.

Here are so mob photos and following that some relevant extract about Boston from Wikipedia. xxx

  

The Three Tenners on tour -ha! Paul Revere's statue.

A brilliant sculpture in the Common. Mike's photo here - better than mine.

The State House 

Taking in Boston Common. The buildings in the background are built on reclaimed tidal land.

Burial ground with many significant headstones including Benjamin Franklin's mother and Paul Revere.

Revere's headstone and his actual grave below.

The Old State House and the site of The Boston Massacre just outside 

 

Monument to the Irish and the hardship they suffered.

Looking across the River to the obelisk on top of Bunker Hill where the settlers put up such a worthy fight against the Redcoats. A win for the British but a turning point in the independence Revolution.

Boston is also a modern city

The site of the massacre.

Bunker hill obelisk.

Dragging my bruvs back from the pub

Carson Bay. An early bright cold morning for a significant dip in the Atlantic !

It had to be done!

Boston is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Massachusetts. It serves as the cultural and financial center of New England, a region of the Northeastern United States. Boston has an area of 48.4 sq mi (125 km²) and a population of 675,647 as of the 2020 census, making it the third-most populous city in the Northeastern United States after New York City and Philadelphia. The larger Greater Boston metropolitan statistical area had a population of 4.9 million in 2023, making it the largest metropolitan area in New England and the eleventh-largest in the United States.

Boston was founded on Shawmut Peninsula in 1630 by English Puritan settlers, who named the city after the market town of Boston, Lincolnshire in England  During the American Revolution and Revolutionary War, Boston was home to several seminal events, including the Boston Massacre (1770), the Boston Tea Party (1773), Paul Revere's midnight ride (1775), the Battle of Bunker Hill (1775), and the Siege of Boston (1775–1776).

Following American independence from Great Britain, Boston played an important national role as a port, manufacturing hub, and education and culture center and the city expanded significantly beyond the original peninsula by filling in land and annexing neighboring towns. Boston's many firsts include the nation's first public park (Boston Common, 1634)the first public school (Boston Latin School, 1635)^] and the first subway system (Tremont Street subway, 1897)

Boston later emerged as a global leader in higher education and research and is the largest biotechnology hub in the world as of 2023.The city is a national leader in scientific research, law, medicine, engineering, and business. With nearly 5,000 startup companies, the city is considered a global pioneer in innovation, entrepreneurship and artificial intelligence. Boston's economy is led by finance professional and business services, information technology, and government. Boston households provide the highest average rate of philanthropy in the nation as of 2013, and the city's businesses and institutions rank among the top in the nation for environmental sustainability and new investment

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