SARE Hansen: GRISWOLD 2009

GRISWOLD 2009 - "GRISWOLDS GO FOR BROKE - THE RECESSION TOUR" - DAY 4

WEDNESDAY, JULY 15

Wednesday, July 15, was two different things. It was the day of Griswold 2009 - Day 4 and it was also the opening of the 6th Harry Potter movie, "Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince".

We began the day by attending the 9:30 AM showing of the movie. The theatre was fairly full, but given that the movie has opened on so many screens, it wasn't completely full.

We enjoyed the movie a great deal and we're eagerly awaiting the final two movies in the series, which are splitting the 7th and final Harry Potter book.

We left the theatre and headed a bit northeast to the town of Gloucester, MA. There, we visited the Hammond Castle. John Hammond built this castle in the late 1920's. Its intention was to serve not only as a home, but also as a place to keep all of the things that Hammond collected. Hammond was an inventor, second in total patents held to Thomas Edison. He was also a very wealthy man who loved to collect artifacts from all over the world. His tastes seemed to be broad and there were a lot of interesting things in his collections.

The outside of the castle is very traditional in appearance, at least for castles.

Of course it also had its share of creepy looking gargoyles.

It had a very large hall that housed a large pipe organ. Hammond did a lot of entertaining here and this room is still used for various functions today.

He had a lot of armor and suits of maille in his collection.

He was very intrigued with Christopher Columbus and one of his most prized possessions was this skull which he acquired in his travels, which reportedly was one of the members of Christopher Columbus' crew.

There were a number of tight passageways and stairways in the castle. We can only imagine that most furniture on the upper floors had to be assembled in the rooms themselves, since we couldn't see them getting things like that through these tight places.