Tag: Boston

Summer Vacation

June 9, 2016 / DB

Summer got off to a quick start for us. The girls wrapped up school last Wednesday. Thursday afternoon we were flying to Boston for our summer trip.

This was my third trip to Boston, but first one that I would be spending most of my time in the city proper. Overall, we had a fantastic vacation filled with several firsts and lots of great memories.

The first first of the trip was our family’s first Uber ride. Pretty exciting, huh? We Uber-ed it from Logan to our hotel, which was a block down the street from Fenway Park. The Sox were in Baltimore on the night we flew in, so the park was dark and the area fairly deserted.

My first fun experience of the trip came shortly after our arrival at our hotel. We ordered food from a place down the street and I walked to pick it up. The man who helped me looked as if he had been born in West Africa, or perhaps the Caribbean. When he spoke, though, he sounded like your average Irish dude from Southy. It was a jarring, stereotype-crusher of a moment. I loved it! I really wanted to take my phone out and video him speaking to other customers.

Friday began with out second first: we hopped on the T to meet my in-laws, who flew in with us, and S’s brother, his wife, and their one-year-old for a Duck Boat ride. The girls were pretty excited to get on the T; it was their first-ever subway experience. They had a great time, even on the trips when they had to squeeze into one seat together because of crowds.

The Duck Boat trip itself was awesome. I had always heard that was a must-do part of any trip to Boston, but I had no idea how cool it would be. It was a 90-minute trip around the Back Bay, the Cambridge River, and downtown proper. You’re right in the midst of all the must-see sites of the city. Our driver was excellent, too. He was a 50-something guy who sounded like a Boston native. He had all the requisite history down pat, and shared plenty of his own views along the way.

“Right there is a stop for the Boston T, the oldest subway in the country. Just try it, you’ll see.”
“The Pilgrims fled England because they were not allowed the freedom to practice their own religion there. Upon their arrival in America, they proceeded to not allow anyone else to practice their own religion here.”
“That building right there is a wonderful assisted living facility. It’s the Boston city jail.”

It may seem cliche, but I highly recommend the Duck Boat tour of Boston.

We headed back to the hotel to freshen up then jumped onto the T again to head to S’s brother and sister-in-law’s home, which is across the river. This time we had to switch trains, which was a breeze. There was never a moment when we didn’t see terrible traffic everywhere, so riding the T was a great way to avoid all that mess. Even with hot, crowded cars, and some confusing routes, it was way better than fighting traffic in a taxi. Part of the dinner spread were our first lobstah rolls of the trip.

Saturday was our busy day. We took the T first to Cambridge, where we did a quick tour of the Harvard campus. After that, it was back on the T to hit the North End for lunch. We walked through the Holocaust Memorial, the farmer’s market, and many of the amazing streets of the North End before having a tasty, family-style, Italian lunch. We topped it off with cannoli from Mike’s bakery.

The girls headed home but I did not stay at the hotel. My brother-in-law and I crossed the street for the Red Sox – Blue Jays game. Our seats were way out in right field, amongst lots of drunken, yet happy, Canadians. I wore a Royals shirt, but really wished I had worn a Lorenzo Cain jersey.[1] The day began hot in Cambridge, was breezy and perfect in the North End, and turned into a steamy one when the harbor breezes were blocked in Fenway. It was only maybe 80 or so, but the sun was brutally right in our faces the entire time. But, hey, I was in Fenway! And the Sox beat the Jays, which I enjoyed.

Sunday it was rainy, so we spent the day at the Museum of Science.

Monday was our first departure day. I hit the T to head into town to pick up a rental that we and the in-laws were taking to Cape Cod. It was early, so I figured I would have to fight big crowds on the T. Little did I know…

When I hit Kenmore Station, they were unloading a completely full train and taking it out of service. I waited as two totally packed trains came through the station but I had no chance of getting on either one. So I walked. It was only a mile-and-a-half or so, but it was another steamy morning and I was a little sweaty when I reached the rental office.

Off we were to the Cape, with a stop in Plymouth along the way to look at Plymouth Rock and eat more lobstah rolls for lunch. The girls had their first-ever real clam chowdah. L especially loved it. She said it’s her new favorite food. Shame we can’t get chowdah that good here at home. We also just missed the arrival of the Mayflower II, which was returning that afternoon after its winter stay in Connecticut.

We were staying in Hyannis, right in the middle of the upper arm of the Cape. After the girls had a swim, we went to the Cape Cod chips factory, stopped by the JFK Memorial – which we had visited 11 years ago – and the girls dipped their toes in the ocean. M screamed and said, “Dad! It is literally ice cold!” Literally.

Tuesday was another day of driving. We headed toward Provincetown at the far end of the Cape, with the obligatory stop at a lighthouse along the way. P-town is full of interesting people and sites. The girls still aren’t quite old enough to pick up on the gay-friendly vibe of the town. Or at least I think they aren’t. I never heard them giggling when two men or two women walked by holding hands. As we did 11 years ago, we had lunch at the Lobster Pot, which is another near-obligatory trip.

Then yesterday we had a near-perfect day of travel. Not too much traffic between the Cape and Logan, through security in 10 minutes, an on-time flight, our bags waiting for us at the carousel, and only brief slowdowns as we drove home through Indy’s rush hour.

This was my third trip to Boston, but really the first time I spent any real time in the city. I loved it. It reminds me in some ways of San Francisco, just because so much is packed into such a small space. It’s a pretty easy city to do on foot and with public transit. I love the diversity, the history, and the energy of the city. And I love doing my faux-Boston accent whenever possible.

But the traffic is a nightmare, it’s a city that shows its age in many poor ways, and I’m not sure I could deal with the constant crowds. At (almost) 45, Boston is a great city for me to visit, but not one I could see myself living in. I need my Midwestern space.

Since we rushed out of town right after school began, today kind of felt like the first real day of summer. The girls all slept in. We have nowhere to be before their swim meet tonight. The trip was a lot of fun, but it’s nice to be home and taking a breath for a moment.

#HeCanFly ↩

Boston

September 10, 2013 / DB

Sorry for the delay on the Boston trip wrap-up. But Mondays are S.’s day off and we did what any married couple who has a morning alone without the kids would do. That’s right, we went through each room in our house and…picked up every damn toy, which we then put in a huge pile in our basement and methodically went through, throwing away the ones with jacked up or missing parts, putting dozens of others into a donation pile, and only keeping the stuff that was still age-appropriate or that we knew we couldn’t get away with throwing away. We still have too many toys, but they are much more manageable than they were a day ago. And we got most of it done before the girls were home, so there was minimal whining and complaining about what was pitched.

Anyway, on to the Boston breakdown…

All-in-all, a terrific long weekend in Boston.

We flew in Thursday night and stayed near the hotel. I went to bed at the same time we put the girls down ¹ and thus missed Peyton’s outburst in Denver. Needless to say, my brother-in-law from Denver stayed up at his hotel to watch the entire game and was thrilled to talk about it the next day.

Friday we drove out to Waltham, site of the wedding. We were staying in a nice Westin, and the girls were loving the amenities that weren’t present at our Thursday night Hampton Inn. They also loved that there were Dunkin Donuts on just about every major corner, so we ate there twice over the weekend.²

The wedding was Friday night, which I like to think was because we set a precedent back in 2003 that you can have a kick-ass wedding on a Friday. Turns out that was just the night the bride and groom could get the band they wanted and they based everything around that. Which I can also respect.

But it was a terrific evening. The ceremony was outside, where it was beautiful and perfect. The reception and dinner were in a museum of invention, which was pretty cool to walk around. The displays spanned from the Industrial Revolution to the computer age. I had to walk C. to the restroom before the ceremony and was thrilled to find an Atari 2600 with Defender plugged in available for play. I got through two levels in the time it took her to do her business, although I couldn’t remember how to trigger hyperspace or smart bombs with the old Atari joystick. Remember when Defender was a ground-breaking game at the arcades?

Saturday the newlyweds rented a bus for the family and we cruised out to the coast where we first ate lunch at Woodman’s. I had the obligatory (for me) lobster roll and clam chowder. A couple relatives got fried scallops, which were pretty fantastic. Well, it was all fantastic. And again the weather was absolutely perfect.

After lunch we went to the beach near Gloucester. The water wasn’t terribly warm but the beach was packed. The girls and their cousins frolicked, with C. digging a hole nearly as deep as she is tall. There was a sandbar about 200 feet from the shore, with the water between no deeper than a nine-year-old’s knees. M. charged right out and was over 300 feet away from us at one point. This is the same kid I basically had to throw off a diving board a year ago. I was pretty proud of her.

After bussing back to the hotel, we kept in the swimming spirit of things and took a dip in the hotel pool and hot tub. I love how the simple act of putting a pool indoors makes kids go nuts. It’s still chlorinated water³ in a large container. Oh well, it entertained them.

No issues flying home Sunday, although the girls did all miss their first soccer games of the season while we were traveling. Pretty good behavior all weekend, a fun wedding, and good times with (most of) S.’s family.

And with that, our traveling for 2013 is complete. I think it’s going to be awhile before we try again to be as ambitious as we were this year.

A few extra notes:

Very cool being in Boston the weekend they were playing the Yankees. Would have been cooler if the games were in Boston rather than the Bronx, though. When we hopped our hotel shuttle Thursday night, the driver had the game on the radio. At the wedding Friday I caught a couple guys checking the score. And Saturday after lunch, as soon as we stepped onto the bus, our driver let us know the Sox were up 6-2.
Saturday morning, as we were walking the girls over to Dunkin Donuts, we were surprised by a large Indian wedding gathering in the parking lot of the hotel. The wedding party, and many guests, were dressed in traditional attire. There was a horse and carriage for the bride and groom. After some ceremonies we couldn’t see, the entire party marched around the parking circle a couple times, dancing along to a drummer. It looked like a lot of fun. We noticed of the non-Indian guests, the white girls were much more into the dancing than the white boys. Just like an American wedding! Also, the schedule for the wedding kept appearing on the hotel’s screen highlighting the day’s events. The ceremony lasted from 9:00 AM to noon, followed by a two-hour lunch. Then there was a reception from 4-6, and a dinner from 6:00 to midnight. They know how to do it!
I saw a license plate in the parking lot I assume belonged to a wedding guest. SWAMI4U.
We saw a traffic sign we’ve never seen in the Midwest. In an area with lots of homes and schools, a sign read “Thickly Settled.” That sounds very New England to me.
In the hotel pool there was a special pool-side menu. The Westin knows how to stick it to you. $19 for a burger, with a 15% gratuity, a 3% convenience change, 7% tax, and a $3.50 room charge. I’m not sure how you can charge both a convenience and room fee, but I don’t think they really need any justification. A sister-in-law tried the breakfast buffet one morning. That set her back a cool $24. Yikes.
We flew through Detroit on the way home. I was amused to see a huge bank of kiosks that featured a small work desk and pay phones. There was one pay phone tucked away in the basement of the Westin in Boston and I explained to the girls that before everyone had a cell phone, folks used pay phones to make calls. Then we see dozens of them in Detroit. It was like stepping back in time.

We had a single hotel room, not a suite or double-room, so there was one TV. ↩
When in Boston, errr, Rome. ↩
And, man, was this water chlorinated. I guess that’s a good thing with all the randoms that can hop into a hotel pool. But every kid had bright red eyes within minutes of their first dip. ↩

Cape Cod Trip

May 31, 2005 / DB

Rather than give you 2500 words on our trip, I’ll force myself to share the highlights via bullet points for brevity’s sake.

The weather, as I alluded to earlier, sucked. We didn’t expect 85 and sunny each day, but this was nothing close to Chamber of Commerce weather. Luckily, I had some good books with me.
M. did phenomenally during our travels. She largely slept on both flights and our 90 minute drives between Boston and the Cape. She even behaved wonderfully when her mom and dad forced her to take a 90 minute tour of Fenway Park. We flew both ways on small CRJ jets. It was funny watching the looks of fear in the eyes of the other passengers as we boarded with a small child. Benadryl is the traveling parents’ friend.
Bad joke of the trip. As we descended over Boston Harbor towards Logan, S. nudged me and said, “We should get some tea bags and throw them in there this week.”
Quintessential Boston scene: As we were driving by the BU campus, trying to find the right route to Cape Cod, several crew teams rowed their boats (what are those called, skulls?) down the Charles River.
The trip to Cape Cod was kind of strange. First, you’re never more than ten miles from the water, but once you get out of Boston, you never see it. Second, unlike Midwestern highways that are generally cut through flat, open lands, the route to the Cape is cut through old forests. It’s as if you’re on some deserted highway going nowhere rather than just south of one of the biggest cities in the nation. Since spring arrives later in New England, many of the trees still had muted colors, making it feel more like October than May. Not what I expected at all.
Our house was nice. Room for all ten people we had each night. A large family room, a smaller TV room. Roughly a block away from the beach. Too bad we only made that walk twice, and then heavily bundled up.
Monday, after an excellent lunch of Guinness-battered haddock and some outstanding chowder (chowdah), we drove to Hyannis. I wanted to go to the small JFK museum there. The museum ended up being closed for construction, so we walked around a bit, then drove to the JFK memorial near the marina. The winds were starting the roar in off the water then, so we ran out, took a couple pics, and scurried back to the minivan and headed home.
On the ride back, we stopped at a roadside taffy stand. A popular sign at the stand said “Fill Your Own Box”. We had fun with that one.
For years I’ve heard Bill Simmons talk about Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. I finally had some. My first attempt wasn’t what I hoped for, mostly because the person serving me spoke zero English, apparently not even comprehending the items on the menu. So I ended up with a plain coffee with milk. Not bad, but not what I was looking for. Later in the week I got an iced latte that was quite simply sublime. Far better than the iced offerings at Starbucks. We need to get DDs in Carmel soon.
Evenings were spent making group dinners, then hanging out while the weather battered our old house. I went through two books (see up-coming Reader’s Notebook summaries) and following the Red Sox on either NESN or the radio. Unfortunately, the Sox decided to get swept by the Blue Jays, so that didn’t end up being quite the experience I wanted it to be. Some of my in-laws looked at me like I was crazy when I said I wanted to sit around and listen to baseball at night. I’m a geek, but I’m not crazy!
One goal for the week was to avoid the news as much as possible. I wanted to chill out and not be bothered by the goings-on in the world. Our house came complete with 70 channels of cable TV, which once the weather hit, was quite popular with some of my house-mates. I ended up learning a little about what was going on in the world because we sat around watching the “24-hour, live, eyewitness, weather-watch, storm-tracker” teams on both the Boston on Providence stations.
Wednesday, we headed to Boston to drop off my new college grad bother-in-law for an interview and pick up a sister-in-law at Logan. We had some time to kill, so drove around a bit, and made a quick trip to the Museum of Fine Art. Highlights were seeing a Jackson Pollack up close, and an exhibit that had old Red Sox jerseys, including Ted Williams’, Yaz’s, Carlton Fisk’s, and of course several items from last year’s team. Some of those old jerseys looked ridiculously cheap. Hard to believe it’ll set you back $200 to get one these days.
Thursday, we went to Provincetown, which lies at the farthest reach of the Cape. That is where the Mayflower landed first and sat docked until they realized there was little fresh water and they then sailed across the Bay to Plymouth. There’s a huge (252 feet) monument to the Pilgrims, along with a couple smaller memorials. P-town, as it’s called, is a very artistic, open community. There are lots of flamboyant characters. I’m using euphemisms the guide books like to use for saying there’s a large gay population in town. Combined with the tiny, crowded streets and crappy weather, it definitely reminded me of my days in San Franscisco. We ate lunch at a place called the Lobster Pot. Appropriately, I had lobster bisque and a lobster salad roll. Outstanding. Driving into P-town was amazing. The land just disappears and suddenly you’re on a highway surrounded by sand dunes. Again, I felt more like I was in Northern California than the tip of Massachusetts.
Friday was get-away day. We loaded up the minivan (including several bags we were checking for the in-laws who were driving back to Indy) and headed north. Since S. said it, I can just quote her, but the highlight of the entire trip was taking the Fenway Park tour. That place is just amazing. As someone who’s loved baseball since I was seven, it made me feel like a little kid again to be in a place with so much history, that seemed so unreachable when I was a child. I’m particularly pleased with how our <a href=”http://homepage.mac.com/dbrann/Album2/PhotoAlbum38.html”>pics</a> from Fenway turned out.
Our trip to Logan and then home was uneventful, other than sitting on the ground for an hour at the gate in Boston. Memo to other travelers: flying into Indy on Memorial Day weekend can be problematic. There’s a little sporting event here that keeps the airport extra busy.
So great trip, really. Sure, the weather sucked, but it was extremely relaxing for the most part. Kicking back in a comfortable chair with a good book while the weather shook the house made me feel like a New Englander for a moment or two. I imagined this is what Stephen King, Dennis Lehane, and all the other writers from NE do when the weather is shitty. If the weather had been great and we were running around each day, we would have come home totally fried. I’m a big fan of being boring and catching your breath when you leave home. Travel is stressful enough without having 20 of every 24 hours devoted to making sure you’re at this place at that time. And I definitely want to go back to New England sometime, perhaps during a fall when the weather is changing. And I want to get to Fenway for a game some day.
I think that’s all the big stuff. Hope it’s not too detailed and you get a feel for how the week went.

Nor’ Eastah

May 28, 2005 / DB

Nothing like spending a week in Cape Cod during the worst May Nor’easter the area has experienced in nearly 40 years. Torrential rains, 50+ MPH winds, temps 15-20 degrees below normal. And believe it or not, I had a great week. Arrived home safe, sound, and tired late Friday night, still buzzing from our tour of Fenway Park Friday afternoon. Pulling my thoughts together over the holiday weekend and I’ll have a recap of the week ready when most of my regular readers are returning to work next week. Hope all have a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend.