Jul. 26th, 2022

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Day two

I hit up Bleu Squid for breakfast (as this hotel doesn’t have any) their prices are delusional thanks for the insanely priced egg/avocado sandwich (also scrambled egg isn’t frying an egg hard and then chopping it up just saying). However their pastries looked good. Grabbed one for tomorrow’s unhealthy breakfast, a dirt bomb (it was good).

I hit the aquarium almost as soon as it opened. Still barely got a parking spot. I did a dumb thing. I figured ‘eh it would be inside, I don’t need my cane.’ Instead it was more like a zoo with tons of outside walking that put a strain on my knee. I ended up wearing my mask the entire time because it was insufferably crowded. Not only was the parking lot full of individual families there were bus loads after bus loads of children. Someone give the chaperones angel wings because I was ready to kill them. All of them. This is why I don’t teach kids. I am poorly suited to dealing with how nuts kids are.

Other than that it was a very nice aquarium. I whipped through it twice because I was through in an hour and thought ‘nope didn’t get my admission price out of it.’ I loved the beluga whales and seals. Went back twice. My favorites though were all the jelly fish. A little known fact about me way back in the 80s my advisor did not want me to go to medical school. He wanted me to pioneer the marine biology program he wanted to create. I did give it some thought. Every so often I wish I had done that. I would have studied either jellies or octopuses (though everyone back then was all about dolphins/killer whales and wanted to work at SeaWorld). I did get a lot of video at the aquarium.

Disappointingly there was only a solitary octopus and mostly he was stuffed into a corner of the tank. The main aquarium was very nice. A lot of tanks, well done, two touch-tanks (that I didn’t get near because there were literally hundreds of kids and let them get their first chances to do that sort of thing). I did a bad thing at the gift shop. I bought another damn plushie but how could I not? It was a male seahorse with babies in his pouch! I have never seen that and he was the only one of his kind there.

After I left the aquarium I hit the Jealous Monk at Old Mistick village and wasn’t able to eat inside, had to eat outside which meant I didn’t realize that there was a huge selection of beer and not just the few on the list they gave me (Until I hobbled in to go to the bathroom after the fact) they were all IPAs on my list so no. Hate IPAs. I see me eating a lot of appetizers for three reasons 1. The heat kills my appetite 2. Not really doing things that are left over friendly and I rarely eat a full meal out even if it’s cold outside 3. When the appetizers are 15-20$ you can imagine what the rest of the menus look like. And okay can we all just stop overinflating the vegetarian offerings. Yes you know we want them but to have the cauliflower ‘steak’ costing 10$ MORE than actual steak…(actually not at this place but at two I’ve been to already on this trip) I ended up with honey drizzled griddled cornbread that was delicious and more than enough for lunch.

I shopped a little because I wasn’t sure I’d be back and had to have the chocolates…only to NOT buy the chocolate. I got some fudge and beer brittle and ran home to put them in the fridge (there is so much in this hotel fridge). I returned to the mystic village and finished touring what I missed yesterday. It was so much fun really. I went back to the figureheads just because.

Then I went to Elmwood Cemetery, which is the one I found on tripadvisor and saw tons of people in there yesterday. Now there’s the thing, I found no names online but it was mentioned famous people were in here (I’m sure if I had taken more of an interest I would have found something). I wonder what was in their heads back in the 1700s and even more so in the 1800s. This is prime ocean front land. You have to wonder why they didn’t reserve it for something other than a cemetery. Maybe it was considered less important than land they could farm. There were a few graves that looked ready to fall into the ocean. I saw some cool things like an entirely ivy covered cross and free range chickens. No really several hens and a giant rooster. Best names I found – Huntley for a guy and Surviah for a woman (I wonder seriously if she nearly died at birth).

After that I returned to Old Mistick village which is done up to look like a Victorian era town but it’s really just a giant open air mall of unusual stores. I hit the one with Mjollnir outside it and picked up a couple of things including a Santa ornament for mom and a little Norwegian Nisse for me that has a doctor’s symbol on it. I looked into the Christmas shop for mom and walked off with nothing because the Santas were pricey. I got stuck in Sticky Situations a honey and olive oil store, tasting every last one of their honeys and paying a fortune for the blackberry and peach honeys that I’ll probably just eat with a spoon.

I came home rested and then went back to the village for dinner at Mango pizza because a) I could get a 12 inch pizza for the price of an app at most of the other restaurants b) I wanted the leftovers for breakfast after today. I got the ultimate blue oyster mushroom, white pizza, garlic, mushroom puree a little spinach and whole oyster mushrooms. It was yummy (but again had to eat outside and bugs bit me)

I rested up for an hour and off to the moonlight ghost hunt in a colonial era graveyard, the Whitehall burial grounds (alongside the Hampton Inn!) with Seaside Shadows. (FYI yes I do believe in ghosts and have considered myself sensitive to them my whole life) Mom’s camera phone did great (as I forgot how much video drains my camera and it went dead). I can’t remember all the stories but it’s hard to forget the first one Captain John Gallup who was involved in burning some seven hundred Pequot men women and children to death and had the nerve to hate on the Native Americans after they killed one of his friends. The weird thing was I wasn’t drawn to his grave but to one that was over my left shoulder. I could feel him trying to get my attention. Turns out that was William his son who didn’t get along with his father and had wind symbols on his grave to celebrate the Native Americans (whom he married into)

I also successfully spotted where they thought another spirit hangs out (Tom Williams who joined with Benedict Arnold) and there was the Woodbridges who took over Whitehall Mansion (Dudley, Sarah and their young son Ben who haunts the mansion) and the Wheelers who found where the town elders had thrown the bodies of a Native American burial and then tried to hide it by calling him a killer and pinning the bodies on him. There was Quash Williams, former slave turned preacher along with his wife Hannah and their freeborn daughter Delacy.

The guide told me I was brave for doing this alone. Foolish might have been a better description. Still I didn’t have much trouble navigating the cemetery in the dark. The worst thing to happen was getting a mosquito bite right under my lip the one place I didn’t slather OFF. The only thing I didn’t do was to crawl inside the Colonial burial vault. Sadly you had to squat and duck walk down steps and there was no way for me to safely do that so I just listened in from the outside. Nothing much showed up on my pictures but still I had fun.



You know you want the pictures )

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