Farewells and Cannolis

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Chris and Arya were up and out of the place pretty early in the morning. My brave hubby had to single-handedly get himself, Arya and all their luggage to and through two airports to get home. Which is no easy task considering that includes her carseat. I'm not sure I could have done it solo without crying. He also took the rental car back with him. Galen and Carleigh's flight wasn't until that evening so the rest of us cleaned up the rental house, packed up, checked out and hopped an uber back to the T train with all our stuff. Our plan was to find my next rental, a studio just south of Back Bay (but not quiet as far as South End) in a beautiful brick neighborhood. This would be my home the next few nights during my nursing conference. We ended up arriving very early and for some reason our hosts were not okay with an early check-in. So we sheepishly headed over to a nearby pub (the Tavern), asked if it was okay to leave our stuff in a corner, and ordered several appetizers, drinks and played a few rounds of cribbage.

I checked in to my studio, we unloaded our luggage and then ran over to the John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center. It was about a 20min walk from where I'd be staying. I needed to check-in to my conference to pick up my badge and other materials. After that we met Cory back at the studio, he'd returned from Vermont to spend the next few days with me and David! David and him would be hanging out and sightseeing while I was in classes.

We still had a couple hours to kill before Galen and Carleigh had to leave for the airport so we set out on a pilgrimage to Mike's Pastries, upon the recommendation of our friends back home. This was back in the same Italian neighborhood we'd been in a couple days already. I can attest to the amazing quality of these cannolis. We bought five or six different flavors, found a bench near the water, and rotated through devouring each one. We'd take a bite of one and pass it down the assembly eating line. We wandered around the waterfront area we were in until it was time for Galen and Carleigh to depart. Cory had realized we were directly across the water from the airport, and remembered there were such things as water taxis. We excitedly walked down to the water, found a hand radio and Galen radio requested a taxi pick-up. This was quite a novelty to us Californians. Ten minutes later a boat shows up and whisks them off to the airport! Super neat!

Then there were three- me, David and Cory. And us three found the closest Irish dive bar to grab a pre-dinner beer in- appropriately named Durty Nelly's. Both boys have a love affair with dives I've discovered. I really enjoy spending time with those two boys, and am so glad that they found each other. For dinner, Cory wanted us to eat at a good Italian place. Neither of them super believe in yelp reviews so the next segment of time involved wandering around the Italian area (North End) staring into restaurants and trying to decide if they were worthy. I can't remember the name of the place we chose but the food was great, plenty of wine and long conversations (mostly I remember talking about canoe camping.. a new hobby of theirs).

After dinner we headed back to the neighborhood where the studio is to find another dive bar, this one Cory had been to before- called Delux Cafe. The inside was eclectically decorated with lights (love it). As we were sitting there with our first round, a British guy sitting nearby asks if we were at the Tavern earlier. Hahaha- apparently, this guy saw us, HOURS earlier, decided we were backpackers and made up entire life stories for our assembled crew that basically boiled down to "David was the one who got us all into this backpacking mess." The British guy was texting his friends about us, and how he wanted to be backpackers just like us so he could drink a pitcher of beer at 1pm without a care in the world. However, giving him our true life stories (as two nurses, two college students and now the new addition of one air traffic controller) did not diminish his dreams. We ended up having a wonderful couple drunken hours conversing with him and his drinking buddy, ranging from our jobs as nurses, dealing with life and death, Cory's take on Sully (the captain that landed the plane on the Hudson) and their jobs in the music industry.

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