Day 22 - Black Heritage Trail, Vilna Shul, North End Freedom Trail, Little Italy, Museum of Fine Arts, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Babson College

This morning I head down to the now very familiar Green D line and catch the train into the city.

I start out behind the State House up on Beacon Hill for a walk known as the Black Heritage Trail. It is a tour of some of the more famous houses and monuments in the area related to the slavery of African American people and then the work towards building up the community with education etc.

The walk finishes at the Museum of African American History here in Boston which was previously the Abiel Smith School, the first public school for African American children.

Along the way I walk past a place called Vilna Shul, Boston's Center for Jewish Culture so stop in to take a look. It used to be a working synagogue but is now a museum.

The pews here were not from the original synagogue but from a near by African American church. A powerful moment, at one point in time slaves were sitting on these seats.

I then walk over to the north end to catch up with the second half of the Freedom trail that I'd walked on Sunday. I visit the home of Paul Revere as well as a park and monument dedicated to him. Further along is the Old North Church and the Copp's Hill Burying Ground.

Also in the north end is Little Italy, a perfect place to stop for lunch where I can't go past the Chicken Parmigiana which comes with a side of Spaghetti Bolognese. Desert is probably the biggest Cream Cannoli I've ever seen, it actually felt heavy from all the cream!

After lunch I trek over to the Museum of Fine Art, with everything from Egyptian relics to Modern.

Then around the corner is the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Isabella was a very wealthy individual in the later years of her life and amassed a rather large collection of art and fine furniture. So large in fact that she decided to build a house/museum to hold it all here in Boston. In her will she requested that the house remain a museum and the placing and layout of items remain unchanged. It has been this way for some 86 years since her death. In 1990 the museum was broken into and a number of priceless pieces stolen including a Rembrandt. Due to the instructions in her will, the layout remains with several empty frames on walls in memory to the art that was once there. Unfortunately no photos allowed.

On arriving back at Babson with some daylight hours left, Tim and I go for a walk around campus. It's a lot larger than I expected. Babson College is a business school with all students either completing their undergraduate in business or if post graduate an MBA. That doesn't stop the students competing in a wide array of sports including the Ice Hockey rink we found! (Remember its the middle of summer and about 35 degrees today!)

We wander past a tree with some famous roots, it is an ancestor of the original Isaac Newton Tree