Exploring Boston by Foot

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Today's plan was to explore Boston, with the aide of our local guide, Cory. He only had one full day with us today before he had to drive back to Vermont for work for a couple days. We decided to drive all the way to Boston today since the parade wasn't until the next day. Cory and David figured parking wouldn't be a huge issue, and it wasn't. And then we could ride the subway to jump from place to place as needed.

We were right by the Holocaust Memorial, so we wandered through there first. Next, we walked through Quincy Market but didn't spend much time there, just sort of glanced around at shops, and then moved on. Too may tourists kinda turned us off. I knew the Freedom Trail wandered through this area. I wasn't sure when but I was hoping to hop a tour at some point if I had time this trip. Next we crossed over into an area that was evidently the Italian district (the North End) given all the Italian restaurants and shops. We'd end up eating here a few times over the next week, and I can tell you now the food was great! Chris really really wanted to eat at this one particular restaurant, Neptune Oyster, but the current wait was two hours. So, Chris said it was fine, he could go without. He then kept insisting he was fine, even though he clearly wasn't, and laughed at one of my brothers for not being honest about what he was most interested in doing. Our group, as close as we were, had fallen into that ultimate trap of not being honest about what we most wanted to do and thereby not doing what we wanted to do at all. I laughed and laughed, and threw it right back at Chris- "Speak for yourself!" He stopped in his tracks. He hadn't even realized it until I said it. So, we made plans to revisit Neptune Oyster the next morning, and we forced everyone to state one thing they HAD to before we left.

After a quick glance at the outside of Paul Revere's House, which is a dark building that sticks out like a sore thumb amongst all the brick, we decided we were hungry. Chris and I had plans to try lobster rolls this trip. And I dunno about him, but I planned to try MULTIPLE lobster rolls, for comparison purposes of course. Since Neptune was a stupid long wait, we ended up at another place right down the street called Rabia's Ristorante. Chris and I ordered an array of fresh oysters and then a lobster roll each, mine with a bisque sauce and his with butter. Yup- definitely delicious!

Post lunch we ended up wandering through Boston Commons. Cory wanted to show us a neighborhood nearby but the Commons itself was very pretty covered with snow. The year before Arya wanted nothing to do with snow. This year she loved it and enjoyed her first snowball fight with Uncle. She played on the playground with her uncles for a bit while Chris and I wandered around the park. We then walked over to the adjacent Brownstones of Beacon Hill. These are gorgeous brick homes the very, very wealthy live in. I doubt they ever go on sale- you just have to inherit one. We wandered the brick sidewalks, played with a historical boot scraper and eventually found ourselves in a cupcake shop. David tried to buy Arya's love with sugar, which meant he had to buy all our love as a consequence. Cupcakes for everyone!

We walked through the neighborhood some more and then found ourselves back in a downtown type area with shops. Arya had finally passed out in Chris' arms, exhausted from all the walking and sightseeing. I was rather impressed she just fell asleep instead of having a meltdown. Parenting in the Age of Narcolepsy. Solid win there. Rather than continue sightseeing for the afternoon, we decided to head back to Marblehead. This was only day two after all. Cory had to get going to get back to work. We decided that instead of going out, the rest of us would all "eat in" tonight and drink back at the house.

So we headed back to our cars and drove back home. Half of the group went to the grocery store to pick up a few things, while the rest of us got started on cooking (me, David and Carleigh). David already had a menu in mind so Carleigh and I acted as line chefs and did his bidding. We ended up with a full board of cinnamon roasted vegetables, sausages, cheese, bread, boiled cabbage and soft boiled eggs. And of course lots of wine, beer and whisky. It was a great night just quietly drinking with the occasional outburst when playing cribbage and bananagrams. :D

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Boston is a great city
So cold in the winter. Yikes