coexistapart's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mainey Today was a really nice day. It wasn't a cram-it-all-in kind of day, but there were lots of things we saw. We spend the night in Peabody--pronounced P-biddy by anyone remotely north of Cambridge. (We couldn't get a hotel last minute in Boston because everyone was in an uproar about the Red Sox.) After checking out of the Marriott (we ended up not arriving at SpringHill suites, so I spent an extra $50--hmm) we drove to Salem, Massachusetts famous for the witch trials of the 1700s. Just visiting for fall would be nice enough, the coliours and the harvest theme, but obviously everything is also decorated for Halloween. Both business and local homeowners get into the spirit of things, although you have to wonder if it is somewhat grudgingly after all this time. Halloween is a very important cottage industry for Salem. There are cornstacks, hay bales, and little gourds or pumpkins by all of the lamps and streetcorners in town. Every 6-8 houses a homeowner has gone to town with the typical bloody, armless body planted in the ground in front of a set; everyone else represents with streamers, or flags, or wreaths and lights. There are enough period houses that you can get a little bit of a sense of what it must have been like back then. I'm really not knowledgeable enough to properly descriobe the architecture, but it involves very boxy raw wood buildings with heavy lead windows, with those little triangular panes that famously magnify the sun's light. We walked through town a little bit, had breakfast at a small local place; they have two lines painted on the pavement for you to follow. We walked around past the Witch's dungeon; the Salem Witch Museum; the Pirate Museum, past a cemetery and a variety of puritan-looking statues to the House of Seven Gables. I recognized the name of this landmark, but did not really know why. Essentially it is considered by some to be one of the top 10 most important historical private homes in the United States, along with Monticello and the Glass House at Running Water? The House of Seven Gables belonged to the author Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote a book by the same title. The house itself does have seven gables and complicated, decorative gardens overlooking Salem's small harbour. We did not go in (all of the museums in Salem, regardless of size or merit, appear to charge $12 for admission) but I gathered from reading a brief introduction that the reason Seven Gables can be thought of as spooky is because it fits into Salem's history given that the book talks about spirits and melancholy the way Bronte's Wuthering Heights does. I know what I'm describing is vague, but without having read either works, I mean to say that the house is simply a vehicle for the underlying darkness of the story. Nathaniel Hawthorne's great, great (great?) uncle was also a local judge, responsible for sentencing criminals to capital punishment. So that is how the house fits in with the rest of Salem, although it has nothing to do with the actual witch trials. We went into a few gift shops and a candy store, which claims to be the first commercial candy manufacturing company in the United States. They make two kinds of unique candy: Gilbratars and Black Jacks. The latter seem to me almost politically incorrect given that they are taffy simply made with a raw molasses. Then again Melinda told me about a random dessert smoothee that she used to order in Paris that was named Oncle Thom. I had alfalfa mint tea on the pedestrian plaza while Melinda went into the Lizzie Borden museum. The synopsis I got was the Lizzie was possibly enfuriated by her step-mother, and the idea that her father would leave assets to the step-mother and her extended family in the event of his death. Lizzie was not home when the deaths happened; an urgent note had called her away on business. Lizzie tried to buy cyanide several days before the events, on the grounds of cleaning a seal-skin coat, but was refused; at the trial, furriers said they had never heard of such methods. It also came out that the maid served Lizzie's father and step-mother swordfish leftovers one night for dinner, either the spoiled swordfish or Lizzie's attempt to poison them making them fairly ill. Lizzie was seen burning dresses--possibly bloody clothes she wore while she was killing them--several days after the murders; but a painter, who had repainted the house, also testified that he had accidentally dumped paint all over some laundry. At trial, Lizzie was deemed strong enough to physical heft the 8-9 times that killed Mr. Borden in his sleep. However, if her alibi was that she wasn't there, why didn't she create a stronger one by involving an actual person calling her away, not an note? A distant cousin also came to visit suddenly the night before the murders; did he/she do it? Lizzie had come back from Europe the previous summer, having been given some of her inheritance early. The thought was that she wanted to live a grandeur life than a simple life at home in Massachusetts, and there is no way that could happen if all of her father's money was going to her step-mother's extended family. However, after the trial, Lizzie never did end up moving away from her small town/rural neck of the woods.... Lizzie was acquitted after her judge gave a long lengthy speech to the jury indicate how she should be acquitted, that it was nearly impossible to believe ALL the material that the prosecution had to present, which apparently made the whole case insufficient. We drove on from Salem, up into New Hampshire. Live free or die! With no sales tax, gas was down to $2.45 a gallon. Can you believe it? Not even in Texas, where last week was an all time low this year of $3.19. We stopped at cape Nubble lighthouse, commission by George Washington in the 1790s. According to Fodor's it is one of the most photographed lighthouses in the world, but I'm not sure what kind of qualifier that needs. We also went to Ogunquit which had a NYT's 36 hours in feature done about it. We stopped at a seafood restaurant and I had a big 1lb. Box of steamed clams and a bowl of lobster bisque. Dinner was in this homy little local restaurant, with two gigantic tables of Boston women (and their husbands) seated nearby and proclaiming their need for KY jelly and to infiltrate their daughters' lives. We also drove through Exeter (home of the famous oarding school) as well as to Dover, which the visitnh.com website proclaimed was a beautiful little town to visit, but really there was nothing; just another drive by in America, except that it was the original colony of NH, ergo one of the oldest sites in the United States. They have blueberries in Maine like the wild ones in Nova Scotia. A delicious little baked pie in it's own little pot-pie crust. We stumbled on our hotel quite late, or at least after dark, so it was difficult to appreciate the full extend of the property. Inn by the Sea on Cape Elizabeth in Maine (just south of Portland) is this BEAUTIFUL little inn (or boutique hotel) that just finished renovations in June. We found it completely by accident. I mean it's mentioned in the New England guidebook we've been using, but the reviews are out of date vis-a-vis the new renovations, and we only went back to the book after all of the hotels we had considered the first time around were completely book. The motto of the revamped hotel is beauty comes naturally. It's just this great boutique hotel, well excecuted with many well-designed touches, on a hill overlooking this sound on the edge of Maine. I mean it's not like you can really complain, no? Our rate was $200 which was an absolute steal, and I don't say that lightly when it comes to paying more than a $139 nightly rate (before taxes). We had a room with a king bed facing a wall with a gas fireplace and a gigantic flat screen tv overhead. There was a screened-in door that opened onto a faux balcony with sound vistas. There was an ipod docking station and alarm clock, gorgeous natural fiber chairs and a standup lamp that gave the room just enough to inject a season-less beach feel into the very 2008 design. The bed was very, very comfortable (although no pillow top) with a waffle sheet coverlet. There was also this dark red plastic side table that looked like it was not-so-distantly related to a cable spool. The bathroom had this gigantic 7 x 7 ft shower and L'Occitane products. There was a mini recylcling bin in the room. Our welcome gift was fresh, spicy gingersnap cookies with a weather card for the next day; the turndown snack with two individual, homemade graham cracker cookies with marshmallows and chocolate sauce. The room cards were mostly cardboard with a glaze. The pens had cardboard tubes with plastic ends. The hallways of the hotel itself were utterly silent with these dull (in color, not design) seagull lithographs. Each room had a heavy wooden door. The "do not disturb" sign was a mini wooden buoy. I don't really have pictures of the common area, but you came in the front door of the hotel and the hallway led to these gigantic glass doors that went straight down and out to the gardens, as well as the sound. There was a small bar area, a restaurant, a gym (personal televisions!) and spa. A pool going down to the private beach. Free wifi, good service overall. The only thing was we tried to have breakfast this morning, before we left, and they said breakfast was over at 10:48 for 10:30am. Another couple also tried to have breakfast. That seemed a little unreasonable considering that it was Saturday. Randomly enough Melinda found out, at check-in, that there was also couple a who was also staying the weekend because they had been rerouted from St. Croix. 7:38 p.m. - 2008-10-17 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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