Plymouth, MA

We arrived in Plymouth on a beautiful afternoon and headed immediately for the waterfront, where we enjoyed steaming bowls of homemade clam chowder while sitting outside and gazing at the spectacular harbor.
I have begun regaling Liz with fascinating (ok, maybe not) historical information about the sites I am seeing with new eyes.
The Mayflower II, a faithful recreation of the original, sits at anchor very near the Town Brook, site of the original settlement. One hundred and twenty souls crammed into this rather small ship, and historians really do not know how they did it; some slept in the open air, some in the longboat, and some in the shallop (which you see moored alongside the MF.) Touring the ship only increases the mystery. These folks REALLY wanted to get out of Europe!
By the way, the shallop was what they used to explore the coast of what is now Cape Cod, until they happened on to the sheltered harbor with abundant fresh water... which they promptly named after their final port of call in England.
You see pictured here two churches, so close you could easily lob water balloons back and forth. (Who would do that?) When the "Unitarian controversy" split the New England Congregational Churches in the early 19th Century, the Unitarians kept the older buildings (the stone one on the left... First Parish Church) and the Congregationalists built "new" ones (UCC Church of the Pilgrimage on the right). Both claim to be the true Pilgrim Church. Both have services Sundays at 10. *sigh* These churches stand at the head of Leyden Street, named for the city we will visit in The Netherlands where the Pilgrims spent 12 years. What is now Leyden Street is the sight of the original Pilgrim settlement, and a beautiful one it is.