Girl Scout Troop Trip to Boston: On Thursday, We Throw Tea into the Harbor and Eat Ourselves Sick

Our Girl Scout troop divided and conquered on Thursday morning, with the rest of the troop heading off to tour Harvard, and my own personal Girl Scout and I venturing west by train and subway to visit one of the colleges she's been accepted to:

Their residential campus looks almost exactly like one of the residential areas at my other kid's college. The only difference is the color of the lawn chairs!

I don't *think* this college is still in the running, but it was a top contender at the time we visited, so during our tour I asked ALL the questions and took ALL the photos.

I'm surprised my kid has since agreed to let me come visit another college with her, but come on. I'm not going to leave a question unasked when it comes to my kid's future!

Anyway, here are some of my favorite things. This is a Makerspace open to all students. You KNOW I zoomed in on this photo to check out all their equipment--is that seriously a SERGER in the right corner?!?

Science lab, with plenty of high-end microscopes:

Good-sized dorm rooms, with VERY ample closet space:

I forgot to ask about air-conditioning, but I'm guessing it's a no. My kid has only very recently learned about the dearth of air conditioning in most college dorms, and she. Is. HORRIFIED, bless her heart. She'll have to ask her grandma for the same fancy Woozoo fan that was purchased for her sister for HER air condition-less dorm!

The campus is in a beautiful area, really green and residential for Boston, and I LOVE the idea of going to school in such a big city. Can you imagine all the wholesome and educational adventures one could have?

The kid and I had a lovely wander around, then hopped back on the subway back to downtown Boston:

We had a little more time before we needed to meet up with the rest of the group, so we got ourselves some Dunkin' to eat on Boston Common, then we walked over to Granary Burying Ground, where the kid had agreed to cool her heels and catch up on all her socials so I could take approximately one million gravestone photos.

I now present to you approximately one million gravestone photos!

Happy as a clam with her iced coffee and her phone. Teenagers are so easy to travel with!

Tomorrow, I will pitch a fit because I walked around this little cemetery for an hour and did not realize that Paul Revere is buried here, but on this day I was blithely ignorant that I had not SEEN ALL THE THINGS, so after photographing all the things EXCEPT Paul Revere's grave, back we hopped onto the subway and over to meet the rest of the troop at the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum:

It was a little on the chilly side, but so beautiful out:

The children were universally horrified--and I was THRILLED!--to learn that much of this experience actually consists of a dramatic reenactment with costumed actors (thus allowing the kids with "Find someone dressed like they're part of the Revolutionary War" on their BINGO cards to check it off), role play, and parts for everyone! 

There was some big theater kid energy in this recreation of the Old South Meeting House.

We all got our own card telling us about the person we were on this night:

We participated in a dramatic reenactment of the meeting that led to the Boston Tea Party, then took a guided tour of a recreation of one of the ships involved:

Then, we each got to have a turn throwing tea into Boston Harbor!

This is basically the culmination of all my life's hopes and dreams. I was beside myself with happiness:

I'd bribed the kids into this experience by promising them a visit to Abigail's Tea Room afterwards. We got a bottomless teacup for each person so that we could taste all of the authentic teas that were thrown into Boston Harbor!

Most of the kids were troopers about tasting all the strange teas, especially after they figured out that they could cream and sugar it until it tasted like vaguely tea-flavored candy, ahem. And as a bonus activity for the Gamemaker badge, most of them also learned how to play Nine-Men's Morris!

The Harvard group had gone back to the North End for more treats. I am VERY jealous.

Abigail's Tea Room turned out to be a lovely place to hang out, and we ended up lingering until nearly their closing time. If you're in Boston and need a place to rest your feet or get out of the weather, I HIGHLY recommend it! The only bad thing about it is that I drank so much tea that I was very worried about what the rest of our evening would look like, since Boston is not overly populated with bathrooms...

And what did the rest of our evening end up looking like?

It looked like Chinatown!

Many of the kids were SUPER excited about Chinatown, and although we didn't have a plan beyond just, you know, *being* there, I think everyone had just as much fun as they'd hoped they would. There was yet another playground to frolic on, there was a Little Free Library with Chinese-language books to investigate--

--there were little shops and bakeries to pop into and out of as one desired--

--and to my immense joy I FINALLY bought my very first mochi doughnuts!!!!

We ended the evening at a restaurant that fit all ten of us at a huge round table with an equally huge lazy Susan in the middle so we could easily share around our various dishes:

It was SO delicious, and by the time it was over I was stuffed!

Fortunately, we had a nice, long walk back to South Station to aid digestion, then a long, long bus ride back to Chelsea Station, then another little walk back to our hotel, so that by the time we finally got into our room and I'd changed into my jammies and found a hockey game on, I decided that maybe I had just enough room for a taste of my mochi doughnuts:

I wish *I* lived someplace where you could buy mochi doughnuts, because they were DELICIOUS!

Here's our entire trip:

• Day 1 in Boston: Underground Donut Tour, Old North Church, Paul Revere's House, New England Holocaust Memorial, Boston City Hall Plaza Playground, Boston Public Market, and the North End
• Day 2 in Boston: Tours of Harvard and Simmons, Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum, and Chinatown
• Day 3 in Boston: New England Aquarium, Faneuil Hall, bookstores, and Boston Ballet

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!