Candor's Leaf Peeping Tour 2008 - Day 8

[Guest]

Day 8 – New & Old

Day 8 started extremely early… 1am early. We were awoken by the phone ringing in our room. After taking about 10 seconds to come to and realise what the noise was I answered. No one was there. I put the receiver down and noticed the message alert was flashing. I pressed the button on the phone to get the messages… nothing. My heart was racing – this wasn’t helped by the fact that there was some shouting outside the hotel and then the guy in the room above us was banging around and had a shower (they were the noisiest showers in the world!). I had all sorts of things going around my sleepy and scared head as I entered drama queen mode. I kept going to the window to try and figure out what was going on as car doors opened and closed – I was fully expecting to see the police there. Eventually we got back to sleep at about 3am although we were awake by 6 again. We went down for breakfast which was in the foyer of the hotel and consisted of 2 tables in front of the desk – I felt like I was being watched. So we quickly went back to the room, checked out and had a McDonalds breakfast instead.

Now looking back this all sounds ridiculous. Clearly what happened was that reception rang the wrong room for an early morning call, ringing us when they should have been calling the room above us. The guy was then showering because he had somewhere to go so early – nothing unreasonable in this. At 1am when I was half asleep it shook us both up and neither of us were disappointed to be on the road out of Hartford. I am sure it is a very nice place but after the problems we’d had getting somewhere to eat the night before and then the shenanigans at the hotel it isn’t somewhere we’ll be rushing back to.

We got on Interstate 84 and Interstate 495. The first stop was the Gillette Stadium – home of the New England Patriots. Over the past couple of years, much to Mrs Candor’s bemusement I’ve become really interested in the NFL and in the Patriots in particular so I was really hoping we’d get to see their stadium. One looking at the places we were travelling to I noticed that we were going with 2 miles of it so it made sense to pop in. They are in the middle of building a massive retail park right next to the stadium so there was loads of parking round and about. We, in Cardiff, are used to having a massive stadium right in the city centre so it was a bit strange to find it in the middle of nowhere. It was pretty big (holding over 65,000 people) though we were unable to go into it as they don’t do tours. One end of the stadium is open though so we could get a good view of what it was like – bizarrely there were “soccer posts” up, it’s also the home of the New England Revolution soccer team. For those of you who support Liverpool - this is how the Yanks who took over made their money!

Gillette Stadium


From there we moved onto Plymouth for the afternoon, we would also stay here overnight. Our first stop was the Plimouth Plantation. This is basically a recreation of what things were like when the first Pilgrims landed. Mrs Candor enjoys her history so was really looking forward to this part of our day. After a bite to eat in the café we went to the film room and watched a 15 minute film which gave us the background of everything we were about to see. Once you’ve seen that you are left to your own devices to wander around the Plantation.

The first part we went to visit was the recreation of a Native People's village from 1627 . There they had ancestors of the Wampanoag tribe. On the walk to the recreation of the village there is a sign telling you about all the things that you were not allowed to say or do to them. For example you couldn’t call them Indians, Native Americans only Native People. Also you weren’t allowed to greet them with “How!” nor make the war chants. I hadn’t even thought of doing either until I read that. I've put some photos below:





The ancestors who were there were involved in the activities that the people would have been involved in when the first settlers arrived. There was one guy cooking a very yellow stew – he obviously had a lot of corn in there. There was a lady who was making floor mats as well. It was very insightful as these people were not in character rather they would answer your questions from a 21st century perspective. Incidentally, the village itself was wiped out by common European illnesses as they did not have the same immune system as ourselves.

[Guest]

From there we went to the recreation of the village of Plymouth – scene of where the settlers landed. Here the people were in character. They were very clever in what they did. You asked them questions and they answered as if there were there at the time. They also asked you questions too, like how far had you come etc. When we said from the UK they would ask things like how are things at home etc. They also were involved in the activities of the time such as tending the animals, chopping wood etc. As it was still quite cool (despite the sun) we spent a lot of time in the huts that had lit fires.

Again more photos:










We then went to the 3rd part of the plantation which was the craft workshop. There they have people demonstrating how the first settlers did things like their pottery, woodwork etc. Again, this was a really interesting afternoon and well worth going to.

outdoor pottery kiln


From there we checked in at the Best Western Hotel. Massive bed, absolutely huge – the room wasn’t a bad size either. After this we ventured down a little of cape cod but due to our tiredness at the night before’s disturbances we grabbed some tea and were in bed early absolutely shattered.

[ali-s]

Interesting day. Shame about your disturbed night.

[luxorsun71]

Think I would have freaked if my phone had rung at 1 a.m. Another brilliant day,would love to visit the Plantation,looks fascinating.

[Guest]

Pity about the disturbed night. Another brillant report.

[DIBBadmin]

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