Rhonda Bracey: At Random

This was the first day our group (QuiltVenture Tour 2016 [QV2016]) was all together. We started with breakfast at the hotel, then met in the lobby ready to start our day touring Boston. Our intrepid guide, Peter (a local historian), took us to the main sites of Boston’s history and told tales of how the revolution started and the main players. He was great! He made history that isn’t our history come alive.

I can’t remember all the places we saw, but there were lots. We stopped several times at various locations — meeting houses, cemeteries (the skull icons on the headstones were to keep the evil spirits away), Boston Common, etc. and learnt more about them. Then we bid farewell to Peter (we see him again tomorrow on our tour to Salem) and were dropped at the wharf for the Boston Tea Party re-enactment. That was really very well done, though by the time we were standing outside in the bitterly cold wind, I’d had enough (I only had on a t-shirt and a pashmina to keep me warm!); however, the history tour still had time to go; fortunately the rest of the time was inside.

Some photos from today:

SOS art installation

Mary Goose, the REAL Mother Goose

The octagonal thing above the pulpit is a ‘sounding board’ that helped project the speaker’s voice to the up to 5000 people inside the meeting house

Dinner tonight was at the hotel’s premier restaurant. I had the New England clam chowder, the black angus sirloin, and a shared chocolate/dessert tier of goodies for dessert. Lots of laughs, and meeting old friends and new.