The PLAN for the day: Wake up at 8:30am, finish walking the remainder of the Freedom Trail, have some breakfast in Boston, head back to the room, make our way down to R.I., pick up the tuxedos for tomorrow, check into the hotel, leisurely head over to the rehearsal with time to spare.

The ACTUAL day:  Reluctantly crawl out of bed around 11:00am, take showers and pack up, sit in traffic in the Boston area for over an hour, eat a Taco Bell brunch on the road, drive another hour to the wedding town, barely make it to R.I. with enough time to pick up the tuxedos, abandon the plan to check into the hotel, have to change clothes in the Men’s Warehouse dressing room instead, then run into the bride and groom on the freeway on the way to the rehearsal!

Funny how things don’t always go according to plan.

It was quite the journey getting to the rehearsal, but the weather was beautiful and so was the location. It is going to be a gorgeous wedding tomorrow! After the rehearsal we headed to Trio for a delicious dinner, and an open bar, HELLO! I’m guessing my 2 martinis might have something to do with the splitting headache I have right now! Note to self: no more martinis.

After the rehearsal Kevin, James, Aaron our new friend Linda and I all headed out on an adventure! Where does one adventure to in Rhode Island at midnight? The biggest casino resort in the nation, Foxwoods! How do you get to Foxwoods? You drive for approximately 5o minutes on the scariest, darkest country roads I’ve ever seen. I thought the vast open planes along the 5 in California were creepy at night, but boy was I wrong. What’s creepy is the incredibly dense trees and shrubs that surround every road here making it impossible to see anything in the distance anywhere. It is like constantly being in a tunnel, which I’m sure would be beautiful on a bright sunny day, but at midnight on a moon-less night, not so beautiful! These are the kind of woods that you only see  in scary movies. The kind that you can’t run through to make a fast escape. The kind where even search parties with dogs would take months to find a body. These are THOSE kinds of woods. And tonight we spent 2 hours driving through them.

How was Foxwoods? It was HUGE. There were definitely more tables and slots than any other casino with restaurants, bars, nightclubs and shops galore. Did we win big? Nah. Did we have fun anyhow? Of coruse!

Now we’re back in the room, and oh what a room it is. Not so much the hotel itself as much as the company in my room this evening. I have the honor of sharing the room with my darling husband Kevin, James AND the groom, Aaron! James likes to sleep with the TV on, Kevin likes the AC to run full blast all night and the drunk girls next door are apparently aspiring country music stars because they have the music blasting and are singing at the top of their lungs. It is now after 3:00am. I think I’ve entered the twilight zone.

It is definitely sleepy time. All I need now is a blindfold, ear-plugs, 2 advil and some extra blankets and I’ll be in la la land in no time. G’night yall!

Wow, what a day we had today. As stated in our earlier note we landed in Boston around 5:45 California time. We had very little sleep among the three of us but set out for a day in Boston on our own. Our first stop was a small cafe called Emerson’s to get coffee and breakfast. Nicole had an english muffin that was more bisquit than muffin and she thought it was delicious. Chet and I had bagel sandwiches and coffee. Acting like little kids Chet and I each ate half of the other’s sandwich so we could have a sausage sandwich and a ham sandwich. Chet’s sausage sandwich ruled the day!

From here we went to a cemetery called Central Burying Grounds in Boston Commons, the oldest public park in the US. Boston Commons was made a public park almost 375 years ago and was used for everything from political rallies, to witch and pirate hangings, keeping prisoners is “stocks” and historical speeches by people such as MLK and Pope John Paul II.

From the cemetery we started the Freedom Walk through Boston. This starts in Boston Commons and takes you all the way to Bunker Hill. We visited the Boston State House, The Kings Church, another Cemetery and more. The entire walk is lead by a bright read line of either paint or bricks on the ground and takes you from point to point. We made it through about half of the walk before deciding to hop on the subway and head to Fenway park.

The most interesting thing we saw on the Freedom Walk was another cemetery. Among those buried are John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin’s parents, Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, victims of the Boston Massacre and many many more. These tombstones were all about 200 years old; words were worn away or broken, names were illegible and they leaned in many different directions. I thought it was pretty crazy that so many important people for the creation of the US are buried in one cemetery.

From the Freedom Walk we headed onto the subway, a treat in and of itself. This is no BART or LightRail system. This is an elaborate group of stinky tunnels full of old, loud and stinky trains. But for only $1.70 we were able to make it to Fenway Park in about 10 minutes.

Outside Fenway Park Nicole asked 2 cops where we should eat and where to get tickets for the Fenway tour. They were probably the two nicest cops in the entire country; happy to offer us dining and tour information and take the following picture with Nicole:

Come to find out later, they probably weren’t real cops but extras in the Ben Affleck film Town they were filming down the street.

Our few hours at Fenway Park consisted of lunch, a tour, and watching Ben Affleck film a movie in the streets outside the stadium. We were able to stand behind the police line and watch them film while some grumpy crowd control guy yelled ate everyone to stop taking pictures. We hung out for about an hour and a half watching the film crews perform multiple takes and set up and take down camera equipment all with the hopes of having our cheesy faces in the background of another Affleck B quality movie.

Exhausted from lack of sleep and miles of walking we headed back to the hotel to plan our evening and take naps and showers. Dinner ended up being simple pub food at the downtown Cheers. After dinner we walked around the irish pub area and little Italy, purchased gelato and tiramisu and Chet capped the evening off with a sausage from a street vendor. A quick subway ride back to our hotel and our one day in Boston is complete.

Tomorrow we are off to Rhode Island for the rehearsal and dinner with Aaron, Tina and their families.

Don’t forget you can find our pictures on flickr

Some General Notes
Weather: A bit chilly (60s) and windy.
Hotel: Radisson
Subway Rides: 4

We have checked into our hotel, changed clothes and are about to leave for our day in Boston. The plan: 2.5 mile Freedom Trail, Boston Commons and Fenway Park. We’ll update with pictures later.

For those of you that don’t know exactly where we’re headed in Europe, Kevin made this nifty little map:

[googlemaps http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=112530478060016265911.0004711468323bae9dd0a&ll=47.754098,7.77832&spn=21.117406,57.084961&output=embed&w=425&h=350]

We start in London, head over to Paris, work our way down to Rome and then stop over in Ireland on our way home. It is definitely going to be an adventure!

We also plan to upload our photos to Flickr frequently. Click Here to see our photostream!.