Plymouth

Sacred.  I wasn't expecting our last day to feel sacred.  From the minute we stepped out of the car til the minute we left.  I felt a sense of calm and spirit. The first thing that we saw as we walked to all the tourist sights was this statue of Massasoit.  It says on the plaque that he was a defender and friend of the Pilgrims. He died in his 80s and there are three replicate statues in Utah.... one at the state capital, one on BYU campus and one in Springville.

The second thing we saw was Plymouth rock.  It's apparently a lot smaller than it used to be because people have been taking pieces of it for years.  

Then we walked to the Mayflower 2.  That was fun to walk around.  Apparently they have dug a trench under it so that it can sit in the harbor. It would be too shallow otherwise.  Just to think of how many people were crammed on the ship for that long... My kids go crazy touching each other in the car. It was interesting to see a sailing ship from the 1600s and the Constitution from more than 200 years later.  There were some things that remained the same and some that were improved over that time.

Jer and the "butt ton"

There was a man playing and selling Native American flutes.  He asked Jer where we were from and he told him, "Utah".  He then said, "Well you're familiar with these then aren't you."  And yes, we are.

In honor of Jer's ancestor, that was the first in the America's to be put in the stocks.

We then walked over to the grist mill.  That was fascinating and quite pretty.  They still mill every Thursday for two hours a day.  We just happened to catch that. 

Then we ran over to the living museum village.  That was spectacular and it would have been fun to have more time there.  They had actors dressed up and engaging everyone.  They had bark huts, canoes being burnt out, cooking mussels over a fire, etc... in the Native American area.

Mussels in a seaweed fire.

In the settlers area, there was a fort replica... which they didn't actually build for 70-80 years.  Homes, gardens, a ceramics shop, etc... Jer got to talk to some of the actors and they represent some of the real settlers.  He talked to an indentured servant that earned his freedom and settled 50 acres nearby.  Between us both Jer and I have about 12 relatives each from the Mayflower.  It would have been fun to talk to a person representing each of them.

The "Mooflower"

We ate food from the Hobgoblin.  It was really good, but the name is what drew us in.

Lobster tail.

A couple pictures from the Constitution.

 

2nd day

The 2nd day, we spent at the art museum and even got to see a special exhibit on Van Gogh.  I LOVED it.

I really liked this one. It was very calming.

Something neat about this museum.... it had a lot of Puritan furniture and silverware.  They also have a large Egyptian exhibit.  Harvard was one of the excavators of the 3 large pyramids in the Valley of the Kings.  I've studied a lot of the statues and other things in my art history classes.  It was fun to see them in person for the first time.

This is one that I remember from Art History.

I think this is pretty even without the rest of it.

This too.

This is the process that I studied in my sculpture class and the internship that I did.

Adam and Eve leaving the Garden of Eden.

I studied this too.

I've seen this one in person 3 times....  I think that's awesome!  I've always loved this piece.  Did you know that it's Degas's largest surviving sculpture?

They had a music/artistic instrument section.