A Visit from Italy Pg 4: Plymouth Masschusetts

July 2011

On Sunday we went to Plymouth. I wanted to be certain to have at least one picture of the 3 of us, so a kind passerbyer snapped these for us.

This is where the Pilgrims landed back in 1620. Plymouth Rock, while famous, is not the most exciting monument around. If you go during the summer, though, a ranger is sometimes there giving interesting historical information.

The Mayflower 2 is an accurate reproduction of the Mayflower, the ship that brought the Pilgrims to Plymouth. Although it seems really crowded to us, the 102 passengers and 35 or so crew (so around 135 people) would have been only slightly more crowded than most of the passengers were used to in their homes in Europe.

On the ship were a number of reenactors. The Ship's Master (also called Captain, although that was used primarily for military ships) was particularly informative. Unfortunately, he also spoke in the English used in 1620, so I definitely had to do some translating for Francesco. The man that Francesco is posing with was hired by the Pilgrims to stay in America, with a small boat, to give them use of the waterways.

The ship had a brick stove for cooking. The white block is sugar.

While we were there, we saw one of the tour ships sail by.

After leaving the Mayflower, we walked along the water over to the working fishing dock. Paul's Father used to like going there to watch the fishing boats. The boat was unloading sand sharks, which were to be sent to Europe to be used as Fish 'n' Chips.

We had lunch at Lobster Hut, another family standby spot. A large firetruck was coming by; I caught Paul in an action shot!

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Updated April 2026