This morning we opted for a free guided tour of The State House (the building with the golden dome that we walked by on The Freedom Trail yesterday.) The building served as a model for the US Capitol Building in Washington and houses the Senate Chamber and House of Representatives. There is an abundance of carved marble in the halls and and state rooms, and our informative guide told us that there was such a shortage of skilled craftsmen available at the time of building that many Italian immigrants were drafted in to carry out the work. (Yesterday we also passed through Little Italy, a neighbourhood where many Italian refugees settled in the 17th and 18th centuries.) Our guide-raconteur gave us a full on account of the part played by the Americans in the War of Independence and the Civil War, painting them in a glowing, heroic light, of course. We saw portraits of all the past State Governors including Mitt Romney and a statue of George Washington dressed in a toga (looking something like Frankie Howerd in Up Pompeii) by the English sculptor Chantry. All in all it was a very enlightening tour.
The next stage in our travels involved picking up our hire car at Logan Airport. For the next two weeks or so, Jim is driving us around in a very comfortable Ford Taurus and I'll be doing the map reading. After a 90 mile journey (surprisingly argument-free), we arrived at the Cranberry Inn, Chatham, on Cape Cod, our base for the next four days. It's a small town with some typical New England clapperboard houses and very upmarket shops. Before dinner we took a ten-minute stroll to Lighthouse Beach right on the Atlantic Ocean. The bay looked lovely in the fading light - just a few people out walking and flocks of birds flying against the wind.
After our meal we sat in rocking chairs on the porch of our hotel; two old timers relaxing at the end of a busy day.
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