Boston Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular

As far as I can remember I have spent every single Fourth of July in Boston. This has always been fun because Boston goes big for the Fourth with the Pops and fireworks. Millions of people join in the celebration from all over the world because it is a lot of fun.

Except when I say in Boston, I really mean in the suburbs of Boston. Since my family is all from the Boston area, I've always spent the day at my grandparent's house, or maybe back and forth between the two sides of my family. We have cookouts, pools, playgrounds, children, and a lot of patriotism going on. The weekend before I usually go to my dad's parents house for a cookout and the celebration in his hometown. There are fireworks at night that can be seen from my grandparent's house.

Then on the actual Fourth I end the day at the house my mom grew up in. From there you can hear the fireworks in Boston, so we watch the Pops on tv, open the back door, and listen to the fireworks from a few miles away.

This year I mixed it up a bit.

The Saturday before I was still with my dad's side of the family. It happened to be the day after my birthday (see the previous post, 21st Birthday Shenanigans). But instead of going to Braintree we all went down to Plymouth where my cousin Jake was marrying his long time girlfriend, Ali. It was a really beautiful day for the wedding, they lucked out. Her dress was pretty and his army uniform was, well, as army uniforms are (he's being deployed to Afghanistan, they wanted to get married before he ships out).

Then we went back to Braintree for dinner. Since we had been gone all day my grandparent's weren't hosting. Instead we went to a family friend's house. We hung out, chatted for a few hours, then watched the fireworks from her porch. It was a perfect view over the neighborhood, really.

(please excuse the poor photo quality. I have a tendency of breaking cameras so I use my ipod as a camera)

Then on the actual Fourth we were doing our standard cookout thing. I had a couple of friends over (Ranee and Sultan). We were hanging around the pool. My little cousin was jumping off the side to me (the closest a kid his age really gets to the diving board since he can't swim on his own yet) when Ranee decides we need to actually go into Boston.

Now, we've always wanted to do this. But all of the crowds were just not something the family ever dared to brave on the actual day so we never have. But this year we decided we were going to do it. We went about making our plans, coordinating how we would get into Boston, how we would get back out, all of that.

We figured it all night, I packed an overnight bag, and we headed into Boston. It was still fairly early (only about 7:30), so we were going to hang out with some of Ranee's other friends. On our way to them we/I decided to take a little bit of a detour...to see the USS Constitution. In all my years of seeing it from the high way on our family trips to and from Massachusetts, I had never actually seen it up close, so I was excited.

On our way we got to admire the beauty of the city of Boston. I've traveled all over the world and still love this city. Just look at it:

Then we came across a Korean War statue. Naturally I had to take a picture:

And then we arrived at Old Ironsides! (my best attempt at an artistic image, sun in the back, American flag at the front):

Because the tall ships were in town the US Coast Guard ship was right next to the USS Constitution:

Yup. Still love this city <3

Sultan carrying an umbrella because of the sun...I'll be honest, I poked a bit of fun at him because of it...

As night fell, it started thundering and lighting, so much so that the Pops were cancelled before the end (as any of you who were at home know, the show was still televised...thanks to the prerecording the night before). And at this point I was really glad Sultan had the umbrella as it had started pouring rain while we searched for the perfect place to watch the fireworks. We wound up under the Tobin Bridge, nice and dry (again, please excuse the picture quality):

The cloud in front of the fireworks is actually smoke from all of the fireworks. It truly was a spectacular show! 

If you ever get the opportunity to come to Boston for the Fourth of July, take it immediately. So many people and so much going on, I doubt you could be disappointed.

Happy Independence Day America!

To start with...

Greetings from Boston!

I have been blogging for a while now about my many adventures in foreign countries (from my perspective, I understand I have a bit of an international following. Shout out to my friends from Korea, Romania, South Africa, Malaysia, Australia, Hong Kong, and Japan!) (www.kmowles.blogspot.com). Over the past year I spent most of my time traveling and having adventures in new places. This year I plan to stay close to home much more.

I am starting the year with a summer internship in Boston. It was difficult to find something while abroad, but after just the first week, I think I'm going to enjoy this new job. The organization is the Massachusetts Council on Compulsive Gambling (http://www.masscompulsivegambling.org/). It is a non-profit organization (my favorite type) that advocates for more attention to problem gambling, as well as running education and assistance programs.

My role is Public Awareness (so that the fact that you just went to the website to find out what the council is because you've never heard of it doesn't happen in the future). More specifically, I will be working on enhancing the social media strategy and helping improve other technology related areas of the organization (so essentially, my job is to use social media).

I got involved here through AmeriCorps summer internship program called New Sector (http://www.newsector.org/). I am a summer fellow, along with a cohort of something like 30-40 other individuals who are also helping non-profits around Boston in various capacities. They have been great from the start. While I was still abroad the director of the program was great at keeping me in the loop as to what was going on with the program. I met her in person for the first time yesterday, and she is equally nice in person. Meanwhile, the other fellows all seem really great (granted I haven't really gotten to know them that well yet, but I'm working on it).

Also exciting about being back in Boston? Reconnecting with friends and family. I got home right in time for my birthday and the Fourth of July, so I got to see pretty much everyone over the past week. Most of us still have so much to catch up on though!

Well, that's just a preview of what I'll be up to this summer. I'll also update my travel blog with some residual posts that I didn't get around to.

:)