My 26th Birthday In (and Around) Boston [part 2]

I took this on Cape Cod, it's going the wrong way and it's from an airplane
but it seemed appropriate considering all the Bewitched stuff we saw.

On Friday we decided to take a bit of a break from the city and see a bit of the outlying touristy type stuff. We started with Salem.

It sucked.

Well, it didn't all suck, but it wasn't like I was picturing it and it was WAY overpriced. I'm not that interested in the kitsch and hype about witches, I am more interested in history and Salem doesn't seem to have a lot of that left. Or if they do, they are going to charge you out the ass for it.

The House of the Seven Gables (3 of which are visible here) as seen from the shore. 

Les pretending to drive a pretend boat

We started out at the House of the Seven Gables, which was pricey, but considering what you get to see on the tour and the amount of information both historical and literary, not overly pricey. The tour guide was very knowledgeable and gave information about how the reality of the history of house differed from that in the book. And it was restored quite well, you get to walk through it, even a secret staircase. We also visited the Friendship of Salem, a recreation of a trading ship from the local area that epitomized the Great Age of Sail. It was kind of interesting and Les had a good time playing the kid's guessing games on the walk out to the lighthouse (see photo).

After that we decided to look into going to the witch museum. It turns out there are like 6 of them.  So I looked up the admission for each of them and they were all about the same. Then I saw the information about the Witch House. It is the only structure in Salem actually connected to the witch trials and they wanted $11 a person for a self-guided tour and $14 for a guided one, ridiculous.  That told me that all the other museums were probably going to be spouting psuedohistory and sensationalizing.

The Friendship of Salem

And psuedohistory and sensationalism would seem to fit with what we saw just walking around town. The restaurant we had lunch it had the Bewitched logo on the wall, there was a statue of Samantha from Bewitched in the green space nearby. Every business we passed either had something to do with witchcraft on their sign or in their name. And I get it, people who are into the sensationalism of witches are going to pay money for that kind of thing. And people who take the occult seriously probably get a kick out of being pandered to and spend money. But I was pretty disappointed in the lack of real history in the place. Maybe I didn't give it a fair shot and if we had gone to one of the museums I would have found it interesting, but based on the rest of the town (and the kitschy webpages and signs for the museums), I highly doubt it.

So we left Salem, we had planned on spending all day there but barely made it through lunch. We were  at a bit of a loss for what to do next, we didn't want to drive the car to Boston, we read many things and spoke to many people who told us not to do that. We didn't want to stay in Salem and we weren't ready to go back to the hotel, so we decided on the other touristy thing near Boston - Cape Cod.

Our first time at the beach together.

Nauset Lighthouse

It was a bit of a drive and we did end up going through Boston, but not on surface streets. We didn't get to the beach until nearly dusk, but we had a great time there. Les was willing to drive back in wet shorts so he went out in the water a little bit. Actually it was supposed to be a little bit but ended up being more like a lot.

He put his shoes and socks up on the beach and put everything from his pockets in his shoes. My pockets weren't big enough for my phone ('cause girl pants suck like that) so I added my phone to his shoes as well. Then he wandered out into the surf while I took pictures. We even saw some seals or porpoises or something jumping around, it was really cool to see them out in the wild like that, unfortunately it was too dark and they were too far away to get any photos.

Then, right as we have decided that it was getting too dark and we should go take a photo of the lighthouse all lit up and head back to the hotel, a giant wave came up farther than any other wave had come in quite a while (I could tell from the dry sand) and washed away Les's shoes and all their contents. We were able to retrieve everything although the pen he had in his pocket was ruined from sand and the screen on my phone became unresponsive.

Nauset Light Beach at sunset.

It was the first time we have ever been to a beach together and Les's first time in the Atlantic, it was a great time and I am so glad we went there after the disappointment of Salem. It was a little stressful not having a phone for the rest of the trip, or rather having a phone that could take calls and receive messages but not being able to answer or read them. And Les had to drive back to the hotel in wet shoes and socks because apparently he hates driving barefoot (which I don't understand at all, I drove barefoot for 90 percent of our cross country trip). But it all worked out, my phone was damaged by sand not water, the water damage indicator hadn't changed so I got a replacement phone for free after we got back home and we made it safely back to the hotel despite Les's wet socks.

On the trip back that night we realized that we were near the conclusion of US Highway 6. We both wanted to go to the end of the highway and, since we had a ton of fun in just one hour on the beach, we decided to come back to the Cape on Sunday before heading home even though it was in the wrong direction.

Nauset Light Beach at dusk.

To be continued...