We drove to Braintree, parked in a parking garage, and took the subway to Boston Common today.

The Freedom Trail starts there. You can take a guided tour with a costumed interpreter but that sounded expensive and not flexible so we did a self-guided tour.

The Common is America’s first public park. It originally held the townspeople’s livestock. It’s easy to follow the trail because it’s marked with red bricks.

I read information about each stop on the trail. This is a memorial to honor the first all-black volunteer regiment in the Civil war.

There were several burial grounds on the trail. This one had Benjamin Franklin’s parents and Paul Revere among others.

The next couple of pictures were taken at the second burial grounds. The text excerpts below explain the symbolism.

We saw Benjamin Franklin’s statue at the site of the first public school. The old city hall is behind the statue.

We took a short break to enjoy some other street entertainment.

There was a couple playing hurdy-gurdies.

And this acrobat from Hawaii.

This woman played the glass harmonica, an instrument invented by Benjamin Franklin.

We ate lunch at the Green Dragon and there were Red Coats inside when we got there!

There were lots of other monuments and buildings to see. Next was the site of the Boston Massacre, the Old South Meeting House, the Old state house, Old North Church, and Faneuil Hall, all locations where events happened that lead to or supported the revolution.

Along the way played in a couple of fountains and rested on a park bench swing.

The last two stops were the USS Constitution, a naval ship first used in the War of 1812 and Bunker Hill which was the site of an important battle between the British troops and American troops. Now an obelisk stands there. You can climb stairs to the top of the obelisk and the boys wanted to do it but it closed 5 minutes before we got there. Dang. If only we hadn’t stopped for that ice cream!

In all we walked the entire 2.5 mile trail though it felt a lot further. Half way through when I tried to check our progress it looked like we had wandered around “off trail” quite a bit.

Good and tired (and hot) we rode the subway back to the car. The city wasn’t too busy today. There were a lot of others doing the Freedom Trail for sure but public transportation wasn’t overly crowded. Tomorrow is the 4th of July and fingers crossed, it will be as easy to get into the city as it was today.