2 posts tagged “boston”

Returned from Boston very late Wednesday night.  Our flight was delayed because of weather elsewhere in the country so our scheduled 9:30 pm arrival at SFO turned in to an 11:50 pm arrival.  We were lucky enough to be in Boston from some unusually low temperatures.  The highs were in the teens most of the time we were there with gusting winds up to 30 mph (I'll let you do the math on the wind-chill).  At one point I was smiling for a photo and my teeth froze.

Of course, when you are only going to be somewhere for a few days, you just grin (with you lips closed so your teeth don't freeze) and bear it.  We managed to see quite a bit in the short time before our meetings began.  Two of my coworkers who are both originally from Boston did the tour with me, to my surprise and delight.  I didn't think they would be interested.  But like those of us from other destination cities, they had not done or seen many of the tourist things when they lived there.  The core of the city where most of the visitor attractions are is much more compact than I imagined.  I expected to be taking public transportation a lot but ended up just walking everywhere.

After arriving Saturday night, we had a fabulous dinner in the North End at a little family run place called Eclano.  My apologies for not having any photos of it.  I was so involved in the experience I just didn't think about it until later.  I had always heard that there was a large Irish population in Boston but I didn't realize that the Italian population there is just as large.  So, we went from our Italian dinner back to our Irish hotel (Jury's).  We were very pleased with the hotel also.  Great, central location.  Very helpful staff.  Smallish but very nice rooms.

Sunday we walked the freedom trail.  I know this activity has had mixed reviews on some other posts but I enjoyed it, despite the cold.  Seeing the actual places where significant historical events took place brings the history alive for me and makes it much more memorable.  I think my favorite stops along the trail were the Paul Revere House and the Old North Church.

The other treat we stumbled upon in the North End while en route to the Paul Revere house was the cannoli.  There appears to be some debate over whether Mike's or the Modern Pastry bake shop makes the best cannoli.  Fortunately, they are only a block apart in the North End so you can try both and compare, if you are hungry enough.  We came upon the Modern Pastry shop first, so that's the one we had.  Just stopping in at Mike's for a visual comparison, the main thing we noticed is that they are prefilled at Mike's and filled on order at Modern.  It seems to me that the shell would lose a bit of crunch if they were prefilled, but I can't say from experience.  The debate will have to continue.

Monday morning I visited the public library downtown.  The old part of the library is absolutely gorgeous.  I could see myself spending a good bit of time there if I lived in Boston.  I tried to see the mapparium at the Christian Science center, but it is closed on Mondays.  I didn't realize that their large outdoor reflecting pool was designed by I.M. Pei.  I would love to see it in the summer when it has water in it.

The cold weather inspired us to pick up the rental car early and go for a drive in the afternoon instead of walking around until we had to drive out to Waltham for our meetings the following day.  We went up to Gloucester (pronounced 'glosta') of The Perfect Storm fame.  It was brutally cold there.  I can't imagine getting on a fishing boat and going out to sea in that weather. 

Then we drove over to Rockport and had a hot chocolate in an impossibly small no-name coffee shop.  Then down to Salem where we took a tour of the House of Seven Gables and the house that Nathanial Hawthorne was born in, although it was moved to that site from another location in Salem.  We got to Salem too late to visit the tourist stuff related to the witch trials.  Maybe next time.

Two days of meetings followed, but we finished early enough on Wednesday to make a quick visit to the New England Aquarium, which has a very impressive reef tank complete with sharks, eels, giant green sea turtles, and rays.  They also have a very interesting assortment of Penguins and, at the moment, and nice jellyfish exhibit.  Following that, a quick drive around the major university campuses and back to the airport.  All in all, a good first visit but plenty left to see and do next time.

I just found out that I will be going to Boston on business in early February.  I will have two days to wander around before the meetings begin and have never been there before.  I would welcome any suggestions on favorite things to see/do/eat in town.