Boston Weekend

One of my best friends, Brea, and I decided to go to Boston for the weekend, in January. I know, not the most intuitive winter holiday to take, but we've made it a tradition each winter to go somewhere cold; previous years it's been NYC and Vancouver.

We arrived on Friday morning, cranky from the freezing temperature in the plane and our lack of sleep (her because of a lap kid and me because of the cold temp and a guy on my row who every time he got up would land back down on the seat making the entire row shake). But, who cares, we were in Boston!

Friday morning we got breakfast at Tealuxe on Newbury and walked through Boston Common and Downtown Crossing. By that time, we were really tired and spacey, and decided to take the T back to the hostel, check in, and take a nap. A few hours later, we were rested, hungry and ready to go out to dinner. We started the evening early, with dinner at Croma on Newbury at 6pm. We had an excellent wine conneisseur at the restaurant help us pick out wines for our meal, making me gape at his knowledge and wishing I could quit my job and just "do that." Instead, I just drank my wine, and enjoyed a mocha martini for dessert - mmmmm.

Then we went to City Bar in the Lenox Hotel, where I had been before when I met my future roommates in Boston on the 4th of July of 2004. Several more martinis later, we found ourselves chatting with a boring older guy, but were rescued by two more appropriate age-range guys who noticed our plight, and yeah, probably wanted to hit on us anyway - LOL. We chatted with them for a bit, and decided, at least they aren't crazy, so we went with them to Saint, a club across the street. One lychee martini and an hour and a half later, Brea and I were B-O-R-E-D. I mean, they were really nice guys, but they weren't doing anything for us. So we pulled out the jet lag card and headed home.

Saturday we were up at a reasonable time and headed out towards Cambridge to check out Harvard and walk around. Breakfast at Au Bon Pain on Harvard Square because it was convenient, and then because Harvard students are studying for finals, there was no guided tours, so we took a self-guided tour around the campus. It was cool to see the old buildings, and then, more for warmth then for interest, we popped into one of the Harvard University Museums, and discovered that before noon, admission was free; it was 11:30 so we figured why not. Several renaissance madonna's later, I was museumed out, but managed to pick up a set of "mini rug" coasters from the museum store. Not many people know this, but I have coaster problem. I definitely keep it under control, but man do I love coasters. Form and function combined into one. Anyway...

We killed more time that afternoon looking around shops on Harvard Square, particularly the Harvard Coop Bookstore. Brea has been starved for bookstore fixes since she's been living in China since August, so it was fun for us book worms. Late afternoon we headed back to "home base" at the Hostel on Mass Ave and Boylston, and got ready for the evening. We made last minute plans for dinner at Legal Sea Foods on the Waterfront, and then tickets to the Comedy Connection in Fanueil Hall. Dinner was great, and the comedy show was, well, funny, as it should be, even though we didn't always get the Boston jokes about people in podunk towns outside of Boston.

On Sunday, I shamelessly slept until past 12 noon, waking up to Brea bringing me a bagel and cup of coffee from Dunkin' Donuts (where else?! :) I don't thing we made it out that day until nearly 2pm, but we managed to make it to Cambridge and back to exchange a shirt I bought in the wrong size for my roommate, and to Filene's Basement, before going to a 4pm church service at Park Street Church at the edge of Boston Common and Downtown. The service was good, lots of young people, and we met up with a good friend of Brea's from university who also goes there. We grabbed dinner in the North End, a movie at Loews Boston Common (Fun with Dick and Jane - hey it was the only time that was good for us) and headed back so I could *maybe* get 3-4 hours of sleep before getting up to make my 6am flight back to California.

Overall it was a good, if quick, weekend trip, and other than my coaster purchase, I'm so far doing well on my New Years resolution to "travel more" and "buy less stuff." At least, that's how I justify all the restaurant and other travel expenses :)