From Pilgrims & Founding Fathers to JFK

We are now in New Bedford, Massachusetts, at another Marriott hotel on the waterfront in a town renowned for whaling. Funny, really, as I was born in the original Bedford in the UK. Breakfast is the same as the last 3 mornings (same chain of hotels) which is to say mediocre, with disposable plates, cups and crockery but at least there is something which looks like sliced bread today so we did have toast!
So…. first stop today is Plymouth and the huge memorial to the Pilgrims Fathers who landed on these shores in 1620 to get away from, as they thought, an unreformable Church of England. About half of them perished on the way and in the first year and initially they had to work with the native indigenous people to help them with farming and survival skills to get by.
From here we visited the (smaller than it was) Plymouth Rock which is surrounded by a large cordon of pillars and guarded to stop vandalism. This rock is supposedly where the Mayflower came ashore.
The waterfront in Plymouth was made even more lovely by beautiful weather today and we then boarded Mayflower II which is a replica of the original, built in Brixham, Devon in 1957 and sailed over in considerably less time than its predecessor took. There were some brilliant retirees on board who were fountains of knowledge.
From the waterfront Ted and I toiled up one of the streets to Main St (parallel to the waterfront) following the sign to Michelle’s Tearoom where we met herself (Michelle) and partook of a proper cup of tea! Ted had crumpets and I had Victoria sandwich but couldn’t really eat it all…. Bit sickly but the tea was great!
I have taken advantage of the bus WiFi to upload half of this but if you are reading this we still have Hyannis Port and the JFK Museum to visit….. (18.34 ish UK time)

Stopped briefly at the JFK Memorial which was impressive and especially lovely in the bright sunshine. And so… now in the bus having spent nearly two hours wandering up and down Main Street in Hyannis Port with nothing much to look at really (except the name of the wine bar which made us laugh) and then finally meeting up at 3.30 pm at the JFK Museum.
Very interesting and still sad after all these years. I still remember I was at Brownies, aged 10, when I heard JFK had been assassinated.Read more