Wanderlust: Salem

So, time to finish writing things up.

Going to Salem is as easy as taking a short train ride North. On my downtown, I found an 18th century cemetery:

Salem - Cemetery

Old tombstones, uneven ground, bare trees... check.

I came back to the present (but staying in the past) with a visit to the Peabody Essex museum. Hum, a short historical note may be needed here: though Salem is mostly known for its witches, in fact it was later a thriving shipping town, and its captains sailed the world over. So these captains founded a society, and decided the creation of a cabinet of curiosities where they would collect the artifacts they brought back. That's the begining of this museum...

So they have everything from boat models to Asian art to African artifacts... even a real Chinese house deconstructed and rebuilt in the museum. Even the temporary exhibition was interesting: modern fashion inspired by Native American traditional garb. I really, reallu liked some of the jewelry...

After a long stop in the museum shop (the jewelry was alas too expensive!) I left for the Salem witches museum! February being the close season, all the witches and pirates haunts and tours are closed (ah!), and the museum is the only one open.

Witch museum - Salem

You are inviting to step into a room where you have a short reconstruction of what is thought to have happened, with a narrator recounting the tale, illustrated by small sets with wax characters. Then we are taken by a guide to a short history of witches throughout the ages.

On my way to the House of Seven Gables, I found the Ye Olde Pepper Candy Companie, supposedly the oldest candy shop of the country. I don't know about that, but I couldn't not go in and by a few pieces. And some chocolate. Yummy.

The House of Seven Gables is both a place and a book. Nathaniel Hawthorne lived shortly in that house, which belonged at the time to a... cousin? Acquaintance? I don't remember, but he chose the house to be the set for his novel, which is a classic of American literature. Later, when the house was to be sold and presumably destroyed, it was saved and restored and turned into a museum. (More or less.) Being a late afternoon in the middle of Winter, I was alone for the guided tour, which meant that I could ask questions to clarify the specific terms I didn't understand (like, what is and isn't a gable?) and I could get a short summary of the novel. (The gable is the pointy thing that ends the roof, often above a window, but if the gable is lower that the roof, for example the protective thingy above the door in the picture below, then it isn't a gable but something else. Clear, isn't it?)