Around Boston, Or, The Best Weekend Ever

I now want to share the about my fabulous trip to Boston over Labor Day. Though it was the end of my summertime trips, it felt like a great pinnacle and crowning finish. I just LOVE Boston, I can't get over it! And I had spent so much time going south to the mid-Atlantic sites of North Carolina, Philadelphia, DC and Baltimore, that I had neglected visiting Chrishon in Boston for far too long. I felt completely renewed coming back up to the capital of New England. And what's more, since Chrishon and I had both done a fair amount of exploring in the inner city already, we decided to venture out to some sites just outside of it.

Bright and early on Saturday morning I was blazing out of the city on a bus north, getting into Boston's South Station in the very early afternoon. First order or business was a big, big deal for me. I saw the movie Little Women with Winona Ryder when it came out in theatres in 1994 (which would make me 8 years old at the time?) and then read the first book. And then the second book. And then saw the 1933 version with Katharine Hepburn, and the 1949 version with Elizabeth Taylor, and then read books about the author, Louisa May Alcott, and then re-read Little Women over and over again. So naturally, I hoped one day I could visit her Concord, Massachusetts home where she lived, and wrote, and based the book on. And that one day became September 1, 2012.







Thanks to Chrishon for driving us and taking the tour through the house, which was both surreal and beautiful, and it was also next to Nathaniel Hawthorne's house, or maybe it was Ralph Waldo Emerson's. I was really only concerned with the Alcott's at the time. After this, we were starving, so we found the town and stopped in for pizza, after which, we ventured to the ice cream store next door because honestly who doesn't love ice cream? The place seemed unusually busy for such a small town, but we soon found out why. Their sizes were kiddie, small, medium, and large, and I opted for just a small oreo-coffee flavor in a cone and was basically given the carton of ice cream turned upside on the cone so that I had to ask for a cup to support it and be able to finish it! SO. DELICIOUS.



Chris and I took our ice creams en route to our walk around Walden Pond, which was made famous by Henry David Thoreau, who wrote a book of his life there where he lived for 2 years in a cabin he built himself.





Now, blame me or blame the education system, but I only learned of Walden from South Park. There is an episode with a national essay-writing contest that Cartman wins, much to the chagrin of Wendy, who sneaks into the school after hours to read his winning essay, only to find out that all he did was turn in a copy of Thoreau's Walden. So I have known of it for awhile.

After that came rest and prep at Chrishon's place before we dolled ourselves up for a night on the town in Boston's Quincy Market neighborhood. First off, we didn't have to pay for parking, we found a great free spot on the street nearby our destination. We found the Purple Shamrock and moseyed on in without a problem, only to later see the bouncers collecting covers from everyone. How did we avoid this and why?? The world may never know. The night was great. The bar had a really poppin dance floor, even if the DJ was addicted to the '90s music for some unknown reason, and met a fairly awesome dance partner for the tail end of the night, before Chris and I took ourselves back to her place after having closed the bar down.

The next day was an excursion to Salem! If you didn't know it as the location of the Salem Witch Trials, you couldn't leave without figuring it out. It's a small little village along the Boston Harbor, and anything and everything that could maintain a picture of a witch or a witch in the name, does. There were girls in witch costumes posing for pictures, witch stores, and psychics. It was very, very overkill. BUT, they did take it to a level that I liked and had a Harry Potter store that even sold BUTTERBEER. What gets better than that?



Here are some images from around Salem









We had lunch in the area (I had fresh cod fish and chips... om nom nom) and we took a walk along the harbor, down a little jetty where there were some sort of replicas and educational tools from the colonial days... I think? I don't know, we just used them as photo props!











And near the witch village... Chris' drink from lunch is catching up to her



That evening we spent at a routine spot of ours, Lansdowne across the street from Fenway Park, (again, didn't have to pay for parking!) and sleeping in right nice on Monday, until (my favorite!) walk to the nearby Mexican restaurant Margaritas along the Charles River, outside in the sunlight watching the ducks and rowers, before more ice cream (mwa ha ha!) and relaxing until it was time to catch my bus from South Station.

It's always so super hard to leave Boston, I love it a million times over, and it's always so nice to escape Manhattan and to be in the welcome home of a familiar face!