Saturday 21st March 2026
Departure day has come around all too quickly and we have only really started to discover all the interesting facts about this historical area of Massachusetts. The Puritans arriving in 1630 with their obsessive behaviour towards religion, even more obsessed than the early Pilgrim Fathers that came over in the Mayflower 10-years earlier in 1620, in fact they deliberately came to this area to get away from the Pilgrims Fathers. Later (1640/50’s) the Quakers appeared and that set the “cat amongst the pigeons” and riled up their intolerance . To highlight there intolerance to any other religion, there was the case of “Mary Dyer” (1611-1660), a Quaker lady that had been “thrown out” of Boston for her own religious beliefs previously, but on her third return the Puritans said “enough was enough” and she was hanged on Boston Common on June 1st. Her Legacy today is a statute outside the new State House; she is also one of the four “Boston Martyrs” that were hanged around that time for their beliefs.
Then in the late 1700’s it’s all about independence and how the Boston tea party kicked things off for the “American War ofI independence”, though being here and looking at the history a little closer, I feel if the British Government hadn’t been so “pig headed”, they could have avoided it, after all they just wanted to be heard!! Of course it doesn’t end there. There was also the war of 1812 when we took-on the Americans again, and the main Boston “contribution” was the USS Constitution (launched in 1797), built here in Boston Harbour and she was the scourge of the Royal Navy during the war, capturing 5-British war ships!!!!
Apart from the old part, “downtown” where much of the interest lays, it is a modern city with several “skyscrapers”, very wide streets when away from the old town and prosperous, no empty shops, very clean streets, no potholes and didn’t see any homeless people, a good visit but we’ve done it.
Dressing this morning was interesting, do we dress for this morning’s cold or dress for this afternoons hot???: a bit of both me-thinks! Anyway an early breakfast followed by an uber to the airport for our flight to Florida. (Note to self, use uber not a taxi from the rank, much cheaper and more comfortable). Checking in was all bone by machines but Fortunately there was “another” kind gentleman to show us how to use the machines ( modern technology👹👹), we then headed to the gate and waited. Our American Airlines was a little late leaving but a comfortable flight where he made up the time. Looking out or the window was quite welcoming, clear blue skies and nice and warm as we found out whilst “trundling” through this huge airport. First a shuttle train to the carousels, surprisingly our baggage arrived pretty quickly, then a long walk to another shuttle train to the main station.
Earlier Christine has got onto her new best friend, “Issac”, though doesn’t like the name I gave “ChatGBT” or AI to everyone else. He gave us step-by-step instructions how to navigate ourselves out of Miami airport including the signage to look for, what train to catch including time of departure and cost!!! Where to get off and advised us to get an uber to our final destination, Boca Ratan, north of Fort Lauderdale. A big thank you to Roger for introducing us to AI.
Up to this point everything had been going swimmingly, we arrived and left the train and headed to the station car park where we were told there was a waiting area. I organised an uber and waited, though where to wait? There were bus stop waiting areas but that was all we could, see so we wandered about the massive car park, even going to the main road, nowhere we could see. At this time I had noticed our uber (on the tracker they send) hadn’t moved!!! The next thing I note that instead of the black Mercedes, we are now getting a red Nissan; oh well a car is a car.
The red Nissan arrived and off we went, eventually turning into the Woodfield Country Club and taken to the club-house; sorry Driver wrong place. Now remember we have never been here so apart from an address, we had no idea what to look for. The driver put the address into his car satnav that we had and off we went, round this huge complex with multiple sub sections all, all with names for the different areas, there is a big golf course and numerous lakes, but still couldn’t find it. In the mean time Christine was furiously trying to get hold of Andrew, who was at an ABBA concert, for more information as to where his house is!!!
After a lot of googling and WhatsApp’s between the driver, Christine and Andrew, we received the one piece of address information we needed, and once to hand, straight to the door. We were getting a little panicky as well!!!
By now we were weary so a quick bite to eat, an hour of American television and we were ready for our bed, tomorrow is another day.