Our good friends Steph and David Harris-Cloake came to the US on an extensive ringing tour. Lucky for us, a lot of the towers in the US with bells are right here on the East coast!
We decided to join the tour on their trip to Cape Cod and Boston. Stephen and I have been keen to go to Cape Cod and thought this was the perfect opportunity. Cape Cod is about a five hour drive from NYC. We set off on the Saturday morning and made it to the Cape in time for a quarter peal at The Community of Jesus in Orleans, MA.
The Community of Jesus is a church community that is comprised of approximately 75 Sisters, 25 Brothers and 300+ community members. They have a new set of bells (barely a year old) and a very unique, ground level, open air ringing chamber. Stephen was fortunate enough to ring in and score a quarter peal on their beautiful bells.
It was an extremely cold evening and Esme and I were grateful to Sister Alicia for lending us some thick wool blankets!
One of the ringers on the US tour, Louise Pink, was a ringer that Stephen learned to ring with when he was young. It was nice for Stephen to catch with her and for Esme and I to meet her.
Stephen was brave enough to make the vertical climb up the bell tower so that he could get a look at the bells.
The new chapel at the Community of Jesus
The following day, our little family followed the advice of Sister Alicia and another community member and visited the New England town of Chatham. It had endless charm, lovely shops and a beautiful beach. We even had fish and chips in a quaint little restuarant. It was a lovely day.
There was a church straight from a postcard in the town center that was selling pumpkins. It was the perfect photo op.
That same day, we decided to drive out to Provincetown, the furthest point on Cape Cod. On the way we stopped at a cute and very popular little bakery called the Boulangerie. The line was long but was worth the wait. The olive bread we purchased was divine!
We finally made it to Provincetown and it was extremely busy (it was Columbus Day weekend, after all)! Discouraged by the crowds and lack of parking, we decided to make a loop around town and leave.
Guess what we found on our loop?! The landing place of the Pilgrims! We stumbled upon it completely by accident and were super excited to have done so! We stopped at this location because there was a big path of rocks leading out into the ocean that you could walk upon. After we finished our walk I saw a family taking a picture in this little park just across the street. Wanting a family picture, we went over to the little area and noticed a sign...
I wanted to visit the pilgrim monument and museum but didn't want to battle the crowds. This was even better!
The pilgrim monument
The walkway of rocks
Looking back on Provincetown (on the rock walkway).
We drove straight from Provincetown to Boston (about a two hour drive) and met up with the UK ringing group for dinner at the Cambridge Brewing Company. Stephen enjoyed the excellent (and cheap!) beers but the service was awful. It took us over two hours to get our meal and it was very mediocre. Good thing Stephen had good beer and we had good company to keep us in good spirits!
The outskirts of Boston are absolutely beautiful. We stayed longer than planned in Cape Cod and didn't have enough time in Boston to explore it properly. We decided to leave the city centre for another trip so that we could enjoy it and see all we want to see. We will definitely be making another trip there before we leave the East coast.
Monday morning, on our way back to NYC, we made a stop of the Samuel Adams brewery. Sam Adams is Stephen's favorite american beer and he was very keen to visit.
The brewery is very small and slightly disappointing (they only brew specialty beer and beer for competitions at this factory) but we still enjoyed ourselves. Stephen had the opportunity to sample many unique beers that we wont find in NYC or anywhere outside of Boston.
After the tour, we took a trolley to one of the oldest pubs in boston. As part of the tour, you can order a Sam Adams pint from this pub and keep the glass! We each ordered a pint (Stephen did the drinking;) and enjoyed a nice pub meal.
This lunch concluded our trip. All that was left was the drive back to NYC...and it was a long one. Holiday weekend traffic turned a 3 hour drive into a 5 hour drive! It was worth it- a wonderful weekend!
