Plymouth, Massachusetts

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

This morning Jalil was tired and went back to bed after our included breakfast. I did three loads of laundry at the motel and wrote on my blog. Eventually, Jalil reappeared refreshed and the rain seemed to dry up. We walked to town - only a few blocks to the ocean. We passed a traffic sign that read THICKLY SETTLED. We assumed that it meant 'heavily populated' but we forgot to ask and we never saw another one like it. There were no other people walking around. We followed the ocean and the harbour. The wind was howling but no rain. A sign outside a dentist's office read HALLOWEEN CANDY BUYBACK. The candy will be sent in holiday packages to the troops. Click on the picture so that you can read it better.

At the Visitor Center we found some maps and information and went looking for 'the rock'. Supposedly, the pilgrims landed at this rock in 1620 when they fled England for religious freedom. In 1921 - 300 years later - a granite structure was built to protect the rock, as it was shrinking. People were taking pieces as souvenirs and it had been moved and had cracked and pieces taken somewhere else. It sounds pretty convoluted and unimportant at this time.

Near the rock we found the Mayflower in the Pilgrim Memorial State Park - a reproduction of the ship that brought the puritans to Plymouth. It was still very cold so we hid in the Pilgrim Hall Museum - built in 1824 for meetings and a repository for Pilgrim relics. It was very interesting. We learned that the pilgrims first left England for Holland where they stayed for 10 years. Jalil remembers that the Dutch made a deal with the English not to welcome the pilgrims any longer. Another reason for returning to England was that their children started to talk Dutch and marry Dutch partners. My memory is that they left England in two ships but one was leaking so it had to return to England and Mayflower continued. It was supposed to land in Virginia - England's first colony - but they came to Cape Cod by mistake and soon decided to move to Plymouth. So how does the rock fit in? There was no mention of Leif Erikson coming to North America first.

It is amazing how fast we forget what we learned!

Well, we stayed in the Pilgrim Hall a long time and when we left, it had started to rain, really rain hard. I had earlier noticed an English tea room nearby so we ran there. The owner had just closed his kitchen! He was selling loose tea so we bought two kinds. Jalil discovered an electric kettle by Bodum and he just had to have it. It has really been useful on our trip. We can make tea or soup in our room, which is wonderful when we do not want to go out.

We were now hungry and it was far to our motel and it was still raining as if the sky was open. So we ran across the street to the closest restaurant. There we were told that they would not open for 30 minutes! They did not let us in! How stupid buisnesswise. I would have served us a cup of coffee or a glass of wine and let us wait. How many customers would they get in this rain? So we ran down the street to the next open place. Enoteco de Vino. It was Italian and they greeted us warmly. We had a great meal with wine and spent a lot of money the other place did not get. But after this slow meal, the rain had not changed. We bundled up and walked briskly in the rain to our motel - not really a big deal - but Californians think that they do melt in the rain and we have lived there a long time.