The Last Day of My Trip

This quilt was painted on the back of the New England Quilt Museum as a fund raiser for the Museum

I've been meaning to complete my little travelogue, so here goes. The last morning of the tour we loaded on the bus and drove to Lowell, Massachusetts. Lowell was a town that developed as the Industrial Revolution caught on and people began leaving their farms to work in factories. I was disappointed that the the video in the visitor center wouldn't boot up as I would have liked to have had more information on the start and the decline of the town. Many of the factories were fabric mills staffed by farm girls who worked to send money home. I did buy a small book about the early days of the factories. Efforts are being made to revitalize Lowell with loft apartments and trendy eating places but our guide said that it really had not taken root. The town wasn't very interesting to look at...all the buildings were red brick and most were abandoned factories. We did visit the New England Quilt Museum and while their exhibit area was small the quilts displayed were well documented (they rotate the exhibit from their archives) and they had an excellent shop where I, uh, made more purchases.

Then we were back on the bus and back to Boston and Quincy Market for lunch and then drop off at either our hotel or the airport. I was annoyed at this point because I could have caught an earlier flight than the tour had indicated but it all worked out very well. I went out during the afternoon and made more pictures and explored Boston and discovered a National Parks Store (in a basement) that had an excellent selection of books (yes, I bought some).

For dinner I met up with 10 other ladies from our group that had to stay over for a next day flight and we had a very nice meal at "Mr. Dooley's Pub" next door to the hotel. No air conditioning here, but good food and they had Samuel Adams Seasonal beer on tap so I got to try that (it was good but not really cold enough for me). I think that was the end of my beer drinking career! We lingered for a while over dinner as we all agreed what a wonderful week we had had together!