Carol and I decided to be tourists for a day and walk the Freedom Trail in Boston. We set off from North Cambridge at 11 a.m. Since we weren’t in a hurry, we took the long way to Boston and walked there via Union Square in Somerville. As we walked up to Union Square, Carol that this would be a good place to consider living:– not too expensive yet, no subway but good bus service, pleasant houses, a real racial and ethnic mix.

We turned from Union Square towards Kendall Square in Cambridge, and crossed the Charles River via Longfellow Bridge. Lunch at the Sevens pub on Charles St., with mediocre food but good atmosphere — and an old sign saying “The Real Paper Best of Boston 1979, Best Neighborhood Pub, Beacon Hill.” I asked Carol if she remembered the Real Paper, the best of the underground newspapers in Boston in the 1970’s, but she didn’t.

We started on the Freedom Trail at the Massachusetts State House, at the top of Beacon Hill. This first stretch of the trail gives you lots of interesting buildings and sites for not too much effort: the Granary Burying Ground, King’s Chapel and its burying ground, Old South Meeting House, the old State House. We didn’t go into any of the buildings because we were really out for the walk.

Next along the Freedom Trail was Fanueil Hall, which was dreary and overrun with tourists and touristy things. Then through Haymarket, which was still open. All the vendors were down to the cheapest, most bedraggledy fruits and vegetables but that point in the afternoon, but it was fun to walk through the scene. Carol saw a bag of Bing cherries for a dollar and a half. “Are they any good?” she asked. “They’re as good as any you’ll see here right now, hon,” said the woman selling them. Carol decided to pass on the cherries.

Walking through Boston’s North End might be the best part of the Freedom Trail — lots of great old buildings, windy streets, and really good people watching. I noticed an older man walking towards us because he was neatly dressed in a fitted blue short-sleeved shirt and neatly pressed chinos; no un-tucked shirt or flipflops for him. When he passed us, I could hear he was speaking Italian, one of the older generation who holds on to the old ways. I stopped briefly to admire the facade of St. Stephen’s church, “the last surviving Bullfinch church in Boston” according to the plaque on it. Old North Church is more impressive because it’s older and larger, but it is not as beautiful.

Across the Charles River, Charlestown felt deserted, with none of the lively street life of the North End of Boston. Except for the tourists, we saw very few people on the streets. One boy, about ten years old, sat at the corner of Adams and Winthrop Streets. When someone following the Freedom Trail approached him, he would intone, in a surprisingly loud clear voice: “Ice cold lemonade, seventy-five cents, best deal on the Freedom Trail.” His voice followed us Adams Street as we climbed the hill to the Bunker Hill Monument.

The National Park Service is renovating the monument, so it was closed to visitors. We left the Freedom Trail there, and crossed back over the Charles River via the locks. We saw three pleasure boats in the locks, heading to and from Boston Harbor. Then through what used to be the old West End to Charlesbank Park, where we sat watching toddlers play in the wading pool (and where Carol got her feet wet, too).

As we walked down the Boston side of the Charles River, at first there was lots to look at. We saw people lying on the grass and bicycling and rollerblading and walking. We saw sailboats and windsurfers and kayakers and even a Venetian gondola in Storrow Lagoon. But for a long stretch there’s just the bike path, which is too narrow, between the highway on one side and the river on the other. We would have been better off on the Cambridge side of the river.

We crossed the footbridge over to Cambridge, and walked up to Harvard Square to get Carol some bubble tea, and me some iced tea. By this time, we were a little footsore, so we sat on a park bench outside Harvard Square and watched the people go by. From there, we walked straight back home for dinner; for it was after seven o’clock by the time we got home.

Approximately sixteen miles.