Cape Cod Trip - Day Four

     The Cape Cod sun rose along with our excitement. We headed out on the bus to Hyannis. We saw the Kennedy Compound, or as much as we could from the street, which was mostly a big gate. We also caught a glimpse of our first beach, but did not get to walk in it! The huge house in front of the Kennedy Compound was that of the owner of Old Navy and The Gap. We ate lunch outside at the Fresh Ketch. It was my first New England clam chowder, and it was delicious, so thick and creamy, nothing like you get in a can. 

To the right of us in the distance is where the Kennedy Compound is located.

We went into the John F. Kennedy Hyannis Museum, which includes over 80 photographs of family and friends from the years 1934-1963, as well as a short documentary narrated by Walter Cronkite. One of the women at the museum said John, Jr. used to come to there to look at the photographs. She also said she sees Eunice Kennedy attending the St. Francis Xavier Church. She shared that the locals do not bother Mrs. Kennedy. We toured the church and saw where President Kennedy sat when he attended. Rose Kennedy sat on the front row, of course. This is the church where Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver were married in 1986.

Off we went for another quick stop at Veterans
Memorial Park in Barnstable (pronounced Bonstable, our tour guide informed us), just a short drive from downtown Hyannis. The park hosts memorials to John F. Kennedy and Korean veterans.  Janie and I hiked down to the beach to put our toes in the sand for the first time. 

We also toured the Sandwich Glass Museum in Sandwich, Massachusetts, where a glass blower created her art. We would back on the curvy roads to Tommy Doyles Irish Pub and Restaurant in Hyannis for our dinner. We were pleased to see our original bus and bus driver waiting for us there. The funniest part of the evening was when our friend Eugene said, “These are the lumpiest, most tasteless potatoes I ever ate.” Our dinner companions informed him it was a ball of white rice!The dinner was not the best, but we were in good company, so we had fun anyway.


Nancy and Eugene and his lumpy potatoes!