Sadly, we have to leave Cape Cod and head back to Boston. We have booked a motel in one of the southern suburbs, Rockland, and will drive around to see what we wish. The hotel costs in Downtown Boston are a bit rich for us. We safe still hopeful that Holland America Line may reimburse us for our accommodation cost over the delay period, but based on their handling of it all to date, nobody knows what the outcome will be. We will lodge our claim and wait and see.
We are only a bit over an hour away from our destination, so we decide to call in at Plymouth on our way up the coast, to further enhance our knowledge of American history, in particular with regard to the Pilgrims landing on this Coast.
Plymouth is about half way along our journey North, and is the final site that the Pilgrims decided to settle, after a wild encounter with the weather, and standing off Provincetown at the tip of the Cape until it settled.
We had come to Plymouth to see the Pilgrims Stone, a monument to their arrival.
The Stone itself is unremarkable
However the monument that protects it is impressive
Over at the dock, there is replica of the Mayflower, (available for tourist inspection, of course). We emptied all of loose coins into the parking meter and still only came up with an hour of parking time, so need to keep on the move.
The Mayflower was a surprisingly narrow beamed vessel
Our run of fine weather looks like coming to an abrupt end, as the barometer has been dropping all morning and there are some pretty angry looking clouds to the North. So, we speed up our Plymouth tour to beat the rain.
Like all of this area, there are beautiful old timber buildings on a grand scale. Many are now museums.
Carole & Kathy crossing the road in front of the Pilgim Hall Museum
The Shoreline at Plymouth
The weather is deteriorating rapidly
The Mayflower Society Museum
The rain has started and it is time to get out of here. As we get back on the highway to Boston, the rain is torrential. We later found out there was extensive flash flooding in Boston and surrounds. We did come across some minor cases.
We arrived at our motel, at just after 12 noon, but they graciously checked us in, even though we were very early. The weather hasn't improved much, so we sit around for an hour or so, before deciding to drive to our nearest coastal ferry station at Hingham Shipyard. the closer we got,the worse the weather became, so the girls checked out a fashion outlet shop, we had a light lunch of soup and a panini in a franchise that seems to specialise in this sort of thing, and headed home.
It was a pretty drive trough the change of autumn colours in the trees, despite the persistent rain. Back at the motel, at bit of time was spent on the continuing paper war with Holland America Line, before walking to the local strip shopping centre next to the motel, looking for food.
The sports bar didn't seem right for the girls, and pizza had no appeal, so we settled on the local Chinese restaurant.. We suspect it was really a takeaway, but they had chairs, and there was a bottle shop next door. We went next door and got some wine, came back to discover they didn't have a licence, but no problem, we could drink our wine out of water glasses.
The hostess was from Guangzhou, and had family in Beihai, both places I have been to. We had excellent service, and the food was pretty good. The real bonus was that the bottle shop had a reasonable selection of Australian and NZ wines.
Tomorrow we are hoping for this weather to have passed through and we can enjoy a day looking around Boston.
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