To get there, we had to catch a real train, our first real train in nearly three months. This one was quite techno, it had leather seats, three seats on one side of the aisle and even free wifi. Win! The journey only took about half an hour, and then there we were in Salem!
The station itself was a bit odd, but we weren't too concerned. We walked down into town and headed straight to the visitor's centre. Along the way we passed lots of different people dressed up as witches and the like all standing about handing out leaflets.
Once we had spoken to the nice lady at the visitor's centre and got ourselves a map, we headed off to the Salem Witch Museum. Salem has a Heritage Trail in the form of a red line painted on the ground, like the Freedom Trail in Boston, which would make the whole experience much easier for us!
The first part of the Salem Witch Museum consisted of an "audio visual" presentation in the round. We all sat on benches in a darkened room where there were scenes set up all around us. Each scene lit up appropriately as the story was being told, accompanied by music and sound effects. There were scenes inside households, a courtroom scene, suspects imprisoned, a man being crushed to death with stones on his chest and a scene at the gallows. There was also an excellent devil lurking in the corner whose eyes lit up red in the dark. In the middle of the floor was a circle also illuminated in red around which were the twenty names of the people killed during the Salem Witch Trials.
When this was over, we were split into two groups to be taken on a guided tour of the second part of the museum. Our group was to go second, so we got to hang about in the museum shop for seven minutes where we purchased a couple of postcards and a chocolate witch face!
The second part of the museum was a very simple exhibition of how the perception of witches has developed through time, i.e. how they started off as celtic midwives who were good with herbs and worshipped the earth, then became feared by men of the church who didn't understand their beliefs or medicine, and thus branded as devil worshippers. Apparently "witches" still exist today, male and female, in the form of people who still worship nature and the earth.
After leaving the museum, we had our lunch on the common, and were very excited to eat our chocolate witches! We followed the trail down to the water front and went to look at the House of the Seven Gables where good old Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote the 1851 novel of the same name.
By this point it was getting crazy hot again. We walked along the waterfront, where all the houses were very pretty and very old. After milling about briefly by the water, we walked back into town following the trail, finding an old burial ground and the Witch Trials Memorial, built for the three hundredth anniversary of the trials. Sadly, the actual cemetery in Hocus Pocus is in Marblehead, a nearby town. Damn.
As we were melting in the heat, we sat and had a cold drink outside a bar before walking to the Witch House, the only house remaining in Salem from the time of the witch trials, where the overseeing judge lived. We went inside and looked around, it was surprisingly small, but interesting nonetheless.
We mooched about the centre of town for awhile and then went to get the train back at about half four. Salem is a weird train station, there's only one line and trains from both directions stop on it? Confusing.com.
We had both decided we needed haircuts, especially before hitting up NYC (obvs kitty reached this decision quicker than I did). So, when we got back to Boston we went in search of hairdressers to make appointments for the following day. Once this was achieved, we went back to the hostel, watched some Olympics and made some pasta. Standard.
No comments:
Post a Comment