Our day in Boston

I have been to Boston more than once, but for Paul and the kids today was their first time in the city. We certainly couldn't see and do everything in one day. Sometime in the future I want to take the kids back to do a lot more of the historical sites such as Paul Revere's house, etc. We left our resort at 7:45 am and drove first to the Museum of Science. We spent three hours in the museum. We could have spent many more hours there, especially if we were willing to fork out a lot more money for things like the butterfly garden, IMAX movie, planetarium, 4D movie, etc. It's a fairly pricey museum, but thanks to our ASTC membership (which cost us $40 for the year) we paid $20 instead of the usual $110 for the five of us to enter the museum. We attended two shows - a live animal show (with a hedgehog) and a lightning show. The lightning show was certainly more impressive than the one at the Franklin Institute (science museum in Philadelphia). I really enjoyed the musical Tesla coils. The kids really enjoyed the Discovery Center (room geared for children ages 8 and under). Their favorite activity was one that involved building a model of a satellite (they had a wide variety of materials for the kids to use) and trying to get it to be the correct weight so it would float at the correct spot in the air tube. Generally their models were too light and would just fly out the top of the tube.

We went back to the van, ate the lunches we had packed, and drove two miles to a different parking garage. First we visited the Boston Tea Party Ship Museum. Considering that tour lasted about 75 minutes, it was very expensive (cost as much as our entrance to Mystic Seaport which could keep you busy for an entire day), but it was very, very well done. We participated in a role playing of the meeting that took place before the tea was thrown into the harbor, we walked around a model of one of the ships (and the ship was named Eleanor, which is Paul's mom's name), and then we walked through a very innovative museum. After this we had a very short walk to the Boston Children's Museum. Again thanks to the ASTC membership the five of us got in for $16 instead of the $80 it normally would have cost. They also validated our parking so it was reduced to $9. We spent 2 1/2 hours in the museum, and we only attended one show. Nadia participated in a play about the Three Little Pigs. She was the pig who built a house made of straw. All three kids had a great time in the museum. On our way home we stopped at Bertucci's for some brick oven pizza. Altogether our adventure lasted a full twelve hours. The next two days we plan to stay here on Cape Cod.

The ship named Eleanor that we toured