Boston - Heritage Trail

Old State House, beautifully hemmed in by modern financial district skyscrapers

The non individual paddle boats (that we went on anyway, and I found it quite enjoyable)

Our big plan in Boston, was to walk the Heritage trail through the old city, and get lots of stamps for our National Park Book, and maybe eat icecream. This had lots of advantages, we thought, number one being, generally, other tourists don't do the walking tours.
Surprise surprise, when we realised that most other tourists apparently do this particular walking tour...coupled with a shakey start (random toilet requests, leaving the National Park Book at the hotel, very hot weather, starting at the 'wrong' end, that we had thought was the 'right' end), and I was sort of worried, but the day turned out ok.
We got clam chowda and lobster bisque for lunch (greek pastry for the kids) and showed very good judgement by also getting a couple of fruit smoothies for us and icecreams for the kids for afters. Hubby got the book and we got stamps. and we got to see a fair bit of Boston.
The paddle boats in the park were a bit disappointing, as we had imagined them to be individual paddle boats (and told the kids thats what we were doing), but it turned out to be a barge paddled by someone.
Boston claims to be the start of the Revolutionary War between America and Britain - as a result of several incidents, I think the last being the famous Boston Tea Parties, the first shots between British Troops and American Revolutionaries were fired at Lexington Common/Lexington Battle Green (a bit out of Boston). It is a long story, I don't quite have it straight right now so I'll try to explain later.

Updated - to correct reference to Civil War to Revolutionary War