First Day in Boston

Sunday was Halloween, and what better way to celebrate then head to the heart of Halloween celebrations, Salem! The train took about half an hour from Boston and it was jam-packed with people who had the same idea as us. About 60% of people had dressed up and some looked absolutely fantastic. Unfortunately, as we had just come from New York, and we didn't have any spare space, we were without costumes, but at least we were not the only ones.

Once in Salem, we went to see one of the witch museums called the Witch Dungeon Museum. Here we got to see a recreation of what the Salem witch trials would have been like and also they had a mock dungeon set up in the buildings' basement.

Mock up of what the dungeons would have looked like for those accused of witch craft.

After this we went for a wander through the streets, checking out the costumes and the other attractions. Almost everything in the town is witch themed so they make the most of their history year-round.

A small section of the crowd enjoying the festivities

One of our favourite costumes! To dress as a goldfish, this girl used orange cupcake patty-pans for scales!

As the afternoon set in, the sun disappeared and it was once again freezing. I think it was about 7 degrees but that is without taking into account the wind chill. It was probably more like 2 degrees. We were frozen and we had coats on but some people, in the name of their costumes, had barely anything on. You would think they would be smart enough in this part of the world to dress in costumes that complemented the weather that they are so used to. Crazy people!

The last thing we did before giving up and heading back to Boston (it was just way too cold, even for me who loves the cold!) is we visited a tourist attraction called Witch House, which is a house set up like a house would have been back in 1642. This was pretty cool with some interesting information. What I will say though, for the biggest tourist destination concerning witches, etc, I was actually expecting a bit more than what the two museums we visited offered, and they are supposedly the best that Salem has. Maybe my expectations were just too high...

Witch House

All in all it was a good day. It would of been nice to dress up and go all out with costumes but mostly we just had fun looking at what people had come up with. And I have some excellent ideas for Halloween next year!

I loved the crayon costumes. There were lots of them, in all different colours!

Once back in Boston, we got slightly lost finding our way back to Bec and Gaj's place in the dark, which would normally be ok but it was forecast as -1 degrees in Boston for last night so it was a really inconvenient time to get lost. Once we found our way back, we then went out again with Bec, Gaj and a friend of theirs for dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant. Here we all shared a bunch of different dishes served on a 'pancake'.