Earl was a dud,

but the hurricane party wasn't. Alex used her beautiful, homegrown tomatoes and made pasta sauce, they invited all of us itinerate sailors and wanna be's and Rob brought the rums. What more could you ask for?

Pre-party, we picked Amanda up at Logan Airport and headed downtown Boston. It was 95degrees and it didn't take long for us to decide to hop the trolley for the city tour instead of walking. Of course, this was right after lunch, where Amanda, who's been reading about our meals all summer, had her first lobsta roll.

It was almost too much history for me for one day. We visited the USS Constitution, the first battleship and the oldest commissioned warship still afloat in the world, built in 1797. It was still 95, so while Steve and Amanda braved the bowels of the really hot ship, I browsed the nicely air conditioned visitor's center and got to know 2 ladies who turned out to be from Marshall MN! They were hilarious! Everything ended in !!! You're from ND?! Well isn't that amazing!!! We're from Minnesota!!! Donchaknow!!! We also managed to visit Boston Commons, the State House, saw The Garden, (where the Celtics play), Quincey Market and Faneuil Hall.

We saw some really skinny houses, this one was only 10 feet wide.

The Old North Church, where on April 18, 1775, Paul Revere saw the "two if by sea" that let him know the British were coming. It's still in use today.

The inside is divided into separate sections and they all had brass plaques to identify the original owners and other famous butts that had sat on the pews.

Yesterday we went to Salem and checked out all the witch burning, hanging, stoning places and also went to The House Of The Seven Gables, which is were Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote his novel of the same name.

Last night before dinner, we raided Alex's garden, oh, the possibilities........