Follow the red brick road

Ok ok, if you insist, I will tell you the story about the red brick road. I'll have to make some effort to remember it as it was a month ago already!
As I already wrote on a previous post, I was in Boston for three weeks and wanted to make the most of it. So when I heard about the Freedom Trail, I thought this was perfect for me. What's that Freedom Trail? Well, it's Boston's way of making things easy for tourists and people who love long walks in beautiful cities. It is a red line, sometimes painted on the asphalt, sometimes made of cobblestones, and it leads you to the places and monuments that made the history of Boston. It is quite long and takes about 2 hours if you're a fast walker, longer if you take your time. And if you really want to learn a lot, you can pay about 10 dollars for a guided tour.

I went to Downtown Boston on a Saturday morning, as early as I could get up, in order to do the freedom trail before the hot hours of the day. I decided to follow that guy dressed in funny 18th century clothes who guided me and other history lovers through the first stages of the trail.

Maybe I should explain why it is called freedom trail. Boston is one of the first cities in America and a lot of events happened there that made what the USA is today. Especially events that lead to the independence of the United States. For about one and a half hours, our guide showed us the places where big decisions were made and important battles were fought. And for the first time in my life, I felt really good to be a French girl abroad.

You thought the whole world hates Americans? Well, it's true. But for some mysterious reason, they hate the French just as much. So when you're French and travel abroad and meet people, it often happens like this:
"Oh, you're... French. Great. I hate the French. Paris is pretty though."
Ok maybe not exactly like this. But when you travel to Austria you feel guilty of having cut Marie Antoinette's head off. When you take the train to London and arrive in "Waterloo station", you don't feel welcome. When you visit Windsor Castle and walk through a room decorated with the portraits of all the generals who contributed to beating up Napoleon, you feel like everyone's giving you dirty looks. And you start pretending you're Belgian.

The guide on the Freedom trail, however, couldn't stop praising his love for the French. "Without you, none of this could have been possible! General Lafayette is our God! Thank you so much! We owe you everything!" Ah, feels good to be loved for once!

After an hour and a half of "making history alive", the guide left us. We had only done the beginning of the trail and were free to either continue or leave. I had a quick lunch in Quincy Market and then went on, simply following the red brick road. It took me to more old monuments, statues, big halls, and through little streets from one district to another. At some point I was walking in that area where all the buildings were made of red brick and all the public places were either Irish pubs or Italian restaurants. And the private houses were bearing Italian or Irish flags. Wait. I did walk a lot but I haven't noticed I crossed the ocean! Oh no, I'm still in Boston.

Then, still following that trail, I crossed the Charles River and arrived in Charlestown. It was the middle of the day and it was getting hotter and hotter at every step. If there were a constant crowd of tourists all around me at the beginning of the trail, there were less and less the more I walked. Arrived in Charlestwon, I was alone on the trail and only passed other tourists on their way back on few occasions. It was getting hard to walk in the heat but I wanted to finish it! As I arrived in front of a big church, I hesitated a while before getting in. I had already seen several churches on my way, do I really want to see one more? Maybe I should finish this quickly and go home, I'm exhausted. But maybe the air is cooler inside that Church? I don't remember what exactly made me enter, but I did, and it was the best decision I had made that day. That church was the most beautiful church I have ever seen. I was simply amazed by the beauty of the building. It was big but not oppressive, it had something warm and welcoming about it. It had beautiful stained glass windows that brought colourful light inside the church and had a wooden ceiling like in old English chapels. I'm bad at describing things but please believe me, it was truly magnificent. I sat down for a while to admire the decoration of the church, oblivious to the fact that as I was sitting there, the air was getting hotter and hotter outside.

Some photos here, though they don't do it justice at all, it looked a lot better in reality:

I finally left that church and went on. I saw the Gate of Massachusetts, a big column on a hill.

After that I was really tired and feeling like my body was just a big pile of sweat, so I walked back to Boston, took the train home and spent the rest of the afternoon in the family's swimming pool playing with my American little sisters.

I have not met the Wizard of Oz, but it was a good day.