Jojo October 6th, 2008
Mystic Seaport, located in Mystic, CT, is a living museum. I wrote about Upper Canada Village before, so you should be familiar with the concept. What sets Mystic apart is it’s size and the huge amount of wooden ships, either in the water and still functional or as a museum piece in one of the many showrooms. Mystic does not have actors which are dressed historically correct, which is understandable as you can see civilization across the river and it wouldn’t really work in my opinion. Instead they have different demonstrations every half hour (we saw “Help set a sail” and “Fish split”) at different locations throughout the village. The village also has many more buildings, almost all of them in active use, and the buildings are spread over a smaller area, so you don’t have to walk quite as much. I said “active” buildings because there is a lot going on at Mystic Seaport, like sailing classes and also a cooperation with a university where students spend a whole semester at the port and learn different skills in the field of “Maritime studies” (also they have a blacksmith where people still actually learn how to do that, for a living). The dock at the west end of the village lifts huge ships out of the water so they can be repaired and restored. So you can imagine how all of that would be kind of hard to hide would you intend to do so ;)
Katrin and I spent almost 4 hours there (and skipped the last 5 buildings, and of course read only a fraction of all the explanations), and it was well worth the admission. You can see that they keep improving the exhibitions, as they had (at least) two new exhibitions/buildings, (with state-of-the-art technology) since I was there last time.
We’re in Newport, RI, right now and don’t intend to do anything but read for the rest of the day since we’re pretty beat and still have a week left ;)
Jojo October 4th, 2008
So we left NY state this morning and headed south-west, using the I-87 south and then switched onto the Massachusetts Turnpike until we hit Springfield, MA. A few exits later we were in Windsor Locks, where the first thing we did was to visit the New England Air Museum near the Bradley Intl. Airport. Although I have seen my fair share of aviation and military museums, this one is definitely worth a visit. The number and variety of different aircraft (civil and military) is overwhelming, as are the sizes of some of their planes. They have everything from small one-man-helicopters, over Hueys, an F-14 to a B-29 Superfortress. Also the have small photo-and-text exhibitions and miscellaneous stuff like Jeep’s, a 1-megaton nuclear bomb and and a large amount of motors and aircraft-guns. All the planes look very well in shape, and not like they haven’t been looked after since they were put of out service. The F-14 was just 3 years “old” (decommissioned 3 years ago), and the oil was still dripping from it. A lot of the planes were in horrible shape (or in pieces) when they were donated, but thanks to a lot of volunteers and donations they were renovated and parts reconstructed in a lovely manner.
After the museum we first got ourselves a room near the airport (right in the flightpath of landing planes). Since it was still early we took the interstate south again and paid a visit to Hartford, CT, where we walked around town and had a look at the really nice downtown and the simply amazing State Capitol building (which was, unfortunately, closed).
Jojo September 30th, 2008
After a nice breakfast we left our room in Toronto and took the 401 West (again), and switched to Route 8 at Kitchener. We took the 86 north and the exit at St. Jacobs. Although dubbed the german capital of Canada, from the road it wasn’t really visible. We didn’t visit St. Jacbos directly but intended to came back later. First we wanted to secure ourselves a room for the night, which we did, and now we’re in the “Olde Heidelberg Motel” in Heidelberg, Ontario ;) (they even have a town called “Breslau”, and seeing as there once was a “Berlin” here it’s kinda funny ;). After we got the room, we got back in the car and returned to St. Jacobs. On the main street we looked at all the stores (which weren’t that many) and took the tour of a small, but very well done (and free) Mennonite museum, which (in film and writing) explains the heritage of the Mennonite faith (and the status quo of Mennonites and Amish). The other part of St. Jacobs (with the market and the factory outlet “mall”) is 3km away, so we drove there. It was a little bit disappointing since the mall didn’t really have that many stores and bad ones at that. Anyway, , we bought some groceries and then went back to our hotel. Not quite hungry yet we decided to take a walk around town (chances are always good to see Mennonites on their horse-drawn black carriages, and we did a few times). After that we had schnitzel with sauerkraut, fries and the local brew (brewed at the Olde Heidelberg, you can see the machinery in the entrance).
Tomorrow it’s Niagara Falls, so expect nice photos again ;)
Jojo September 26th, 2008
Today we left Montreal southbound, along Lake Ontario. We stopped at Upper Canada Village, which is a must-see if you’re in that region and also one of the best examples (I know of) of how American/Canadian museums differ from those known in Europe. The village is an accumulation of houses that you find in the 19th century along the banks of the St Lauren’s river. Because of numerous dams and canals which had to be built in order to generate electricy and provide safe passage for vessels which had to conquer some pretty scary looking rapids before that, a lot of small villages and settlements were flooded. So the government relocated about 6000 people and also managed to put some of their houses and churches on flatbed trucks. A few of the particularly pretty ones were driven to the site where the Upper Canada Village is today (and a few of them were reconstructed). This process started in the 1950s and is still continuing today.
The village is a living museum, that means that you can’t only walk through the streets and look into all of the fully furnished houses, but also that there are actors employed which wear the era’s clothes and go about their daily business. For example there is a broom-maker who makes all the village’s brooms, there is a blacksmith and a saw-mill where all the wood needed for the village is cut into the right shape. Of course these people don’t talk exactly the way it was back then or pretend that we’re not actually living in 2008, but it’s still nice enough to see them around town and visiting one another.
After a very nice day there we drove one for a few miles and managed to get a nice cabin where we’ll spend the night.
Jojo September 25th, 2008
Having seen enough of downtown Montreal yesterday, we visited the Olympic Park today. As we had planned, we didn’t spend any money on public transportation or parking and instead walked there. Now, this took us about 1 1/2 hours (the way back was 2 hours), so you can see how we managed to spend most of our day ;).
Anyway, upon arriving we bought tickets to the Biodome, an indoor-zoo simulating 4 different climatic habitats (tropical jungle, laurentian forest, St. Lawrence Marine and the arctic). The cool thing is that you walk from one ecosystem into the next one and are right in the middle of the jungle and the animals for example. Check out the photos below to see a lot of cute animals (the puffins, which are Katrin’s new favorite animals, seemed to be having a lot of fun swimming against the artificial current).
After the Biodome we did not go up the Olympic tower (again, since we thought of it as being much to expensive for one elevator ride). We also didn’t pay the hefty entrance fee to see the botanical gardens (we knew we would get enough walking anyway). So we headed south until we hit the river and then made our way back to the old port (7km). Arriving at about 3:30 we picked one of the first restaurants we saw where we had a pretty expensive salad (good thing we saved on the means of getting there). At least we had one huge motherload of ice afterwards. Our feet even more exhausted we returned to the hotel, where I just measured today’s walking distance at about 15km.
Tomorrow we’ll be leaving for Ottawa, where I hope distances aren’t quite as big ;)
Jojo September 18th, 2008
Today we left Boston, as predicted, and headed for Salem. The drive there was short and pleasent, and we found a parking space directly opposite the visitor’s center. Salem, borrowing from the Freedom Trail, has its own red path which leads visitors through the city, although it is somewhat chaotic, often branching of in two different directions where it clearly should be going straight and not having many information points. At the end of the self-guided tour (which was still nice, although we got pretty sick of all the dozens of witch-museums/stores/nail-studios etc) we decided to visit the Salem Witch Museum.
After Salem we drove around Cape Ann, which is said to be of similar beauty like Cape Cod (I will tell you if that’s correct when we get to Cape Cod ourselves). This was definitely the best part of road we saw today, and with a speed limits of about 25-35 and virtually zero traffic we crawled around the peninsula and took everything in. After Cape Ann we continued heading north, with the intended destination of Portland, ME. We took Route 1, avoiding the I-95 and its turnpike-section in NH and Maine (we weren’t in a rush, and although Route 1 isn’t the prettiest, it was still nicer than taking the Interstate). We stopped when we saw the Kittery Trading Post, an outlet store very similar to L.L. Bean’s (although an employee assured me that the service in Kittery was way better). We got some nice things which were on sale, browsed their enormous inventory and had a look at some of the thousands of rifles and shotguns they had in store. Having gone through our first outlet-shopping-spree (Freeport is closing in too), we decided that we wouldn’t stop until we reached Portland and managed to get a room for the night.
So, now we are at the Motel 6 in Portland, quite tired, again, and without Internet this time, which is why you’ll be reading this post at some future point ;)
Jojo September 16th, 2008
Ok, I’ll keep this short as we’re on the verge of falling asleep (still a little bit of jet-lag I guess).
Today we took the bus (and subway) into Boston, which is a much easier way than trying to get there by car. We exited Downtown Crossing, which is near the Boston Common (a public park), because that’s where the famous Freedom Trail starts. The Freedom Trail is a red-lined footpath through Boston which includes a lot of historic sites and buildings, so it’s an easy way to see some of the most important things when it comes to the history of Boston (and the United States of course). As you can imagine the path is quite frequented (especially by more senior citizens) and at some points has become somewhat commercialized (we didn’t really go into any of the buildings, avoiding the charge and saving some time). Near the end of the path we rested at the USS Constitution and decided to go aboard the ship itself. As the USS Constitution is still commissioned, it (and the surrounding facilities) are US-navy installations, so we had to go through airport-like security in order to get in. Afterwards we finished the trail at the Bunker Hill monument and then made our way back downtown in order to get some food (we had breakfast at about 7:30 am and were nearing 3 pm at that time). After a somewhat disappointing meal at one of the usual fast-food-places we finished our first day downtown with a nice Latte and then headed back.
While this all might sound like a pretty quick tour I can assure you that it was not, especially distance-wise. So, now we’re at the hotel, the last thing we managed to was to get some food at a supermarket (can’t really eat take-out twice a day) before putting up our numb feet for the last time today.
After a day in the city, a trip to the supermarket and about 2 hours of CNN I already noticed a few things that bothered me somewhat about the way things work over here, things that didn’t really strike me as negative the last time I was here (which is about 5 years ago). Maybe I’ll find the time to put those things into a separate post at a later time. For now enjoy the photos ;)
By the way: Our car is a Toyota Corolla S and you should buy the diet-version of joghurts as they taste what I would call “normal” ;)
