Paul Revere has long completed his Midnight Ride and the first shots have been fired at Lexington and Concord, so we can start the USA’s 250th party early, right?
The USA is in full excited preparation mode for next year’s Semiquincentennial celebrations as we discovered at its travel fair in Chicago.
Quite a mouthful, although the Classics-loving Founding Fathers would no doubt have approved.
The veritas est (that’s one for my old Latin teacher ‘Weed’ McCafferty) America’s revolution is played out daily across the old 13 colonies.
The Cradle of the Revolution
And nowhere more so than in the Cradle of the Revolution Boston.
Where visitors are invited to channel their inner Patriots, holler Huzzah and throw a crate of tea (on a pulley) into the harbour.
At the award-winning Boston Tea Party Museum.
Or walk the 2.5kms Freedom Trail to take in 16 of the sites critical to that first year of the Revolutionary War.
That there isn’t a plaque marking my time working in Faneuil Hall, or the Irish bar institution that is The Black Rose, is probably an oversight.
But we’re sure that our friends in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts will have that rectified.
By the time they invite us out for the 250th anniversary of the actual signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Bustin’ for Boston 250
Boston will, of course, do American proud as it did back then and has been ever since.
It has an ongoing hub to curate projects aligned to Boston 250.
And the city’s enduring contribution to Freedom.
With Martin Luther King’s rally in Boston in 1965, a momentous year for the world with the birth of one very important travel blogger, commemorated.
With the dedication of Freedom March Square at the entrance to Boston Common.
A Common purpose
The Common is the oldest (and Boston has a lot of those firsts) public green space in America, dating back to 1634.
And Bostonians are rightly proud of their playground which will be central to next year’s festivities.
Our Beantown Buddies, of course, have proved with blood, bravuro and beer that they will defend their liberties to the hilt.
But that respect, of course, is twofold, particularly when you’re a visitor from its old overlords.
Which is why we observed the no unlicensed drinking of cans on the Common or outside at all.
But Nick the #&%*, a randomer on our plane who had attached himself to us, arrogantly ignored the rules and landed himself a fine.
A mistake we won’t ever be making. Because Bostonians still live out their Patriot days daily here.
Which is why they would every right to start the USA’s 250th party early because this is where it all started.