One more pic from Boston

Cincinnati

I spent the weekend in Cincinnati. It's a great town, and I know great people who live there. Sadly I have no pictures, but I'll tell you about it anyway.

Got a lift to the airport on Friday. Discovered my first flight was delayed enough that it would cause me to miss my second flight. So instead of connecting in Philly, I connected in Charlotte, North Carolina. Had a 2 hour lay over there. Tried some NC BBQ. Which I found out a few weeks earlier is different from regular BBQ. It was good.

My friend came and picked me up at the Cinci airport. We went home to meet up with her husband. Then the three of us went to Michaelsons, I think. Had some great seafood. Didn't order the Maryland crab cakes, though. I thought maybe if I really wanted that, I should probably order those here.

Saturday I slept in. I probably would have slept longer, but thought maybe I should be a decent guest and get up at some point. We went and checked out a couple of Farmer's Markets. One was in Kentucky and my friend's husband's architecture firm did some work on it. It was an okay market. Nothing too exciting. then we went to the one in Cincinnati. Findley's Market, I believe. It's been around for over 100 years I think. they recently (within the last 10 years) rebuilt the building. That market was better. neither one had much fresh fruit though.

We headed over to the Hofbrauhaus for lunch. This is supposed to be similar to the one in Germany. (http://www.hofbrauhausnewport.com/) It was very good. And I got to try schnitzel; it wasn't on a stick though (funny if you've seen Hoodwinked). I had 1/2 a beer which works out to be 1 1/2 bottles of beer. The full glass is equal to 3 bottles of beer!!

After lunch we went back to the house. I took a 2 hour nap. Then we had some dinner and headed back across the river to Kentucky. We went to a concert by the Kentucky Symphony Orchestra. they did Bandstand music. It was a lot of fun.

Sunday my friends worked on putting a roof on their new porch. I didn't help much. My friend and I went and did some shopping. We had dinner at the house. Beer can chicken. It was very tasty. Also had some watermelon. I think we spent that night at the house.

Monday I went and hung out with my other friend. We went to Pappadeaux's for dinner. I had been once years before to the one in Austin. The food was good. very filling.

Tuesday my college friend and I went to Warren (I think) and did some antique shopping. Then we met up with her husband downtown and went to Rock Bottom brewery for dinner (http://rockbottom.com/RockBottomWeb/RBR/Home.aspx). The waiter gave us these cards to join the "club" and get cool things. I was like "I don't really need this, I probably won't come that often" but then I was reading about their other locations, and they have one in Bethesda. (which is about 15-20 minutes away from where I live)

After dinner it was off to the airport. We took the scenic route. :) It was fun to see the city.

So all in all, I had a good time and ate lots of good food.

Occoquan

Sunday July 2, 2006

Paulanne, Lisa, and I went to Occoquan, Virginia. It is a nice little historic town with some interesting things to see. These are just a few.

This is the Ebenezer Baptist Church. I thought it was a cute little church.

This was taken from the foot bridge over the Occoquan river.
Small falls.
This is the Rockledge Mansion.
Paulanne and Lisa refer to this as the "cartoon window".
Riverwalk Shops
Paulanne and Lisa.

Occoquan is easy to walk around and has several ghost stories. We had lunch at the Virginia Grill and dessert at the Ice Cream and Fudge shop. Overall a very pleasant and relaxing day.

Trip to Boston, MA, Monday, June 5, 2006

Trip to Boston, MA
Monday, June 5, 2006

Monday we got up and made sure everything was packed up. Monday’s weather was gorgeous. The best weather of the trip. We headed over to the Boston Tea Party Ship and Museum area. I took some pictures.

View of Boston Tea Party Museum site with Children’s Museum in back
View of Boston Tea Party Museum site with Children’s Museum in back

Then we went off to Brattle Book Shop, founded in 1825. We looked at their selection of $1, $3 and $5 books. Then it was off to find some food.

Brattle Book Shop

We ended up at Delmarcio’s café. It’s next to Old City Hall. Then it was back to the hotel to check out. Then we walked over to Marriott Long Wharf, next to Columbus Park. From there we took the water taxi over across the bay. I got some pictures of the Boston skyline.

View from Water Taxi (the big white tend is where Harpoonfest was held)

View from Water Taxi

View from Water Taxi

View from Water Taxi

Then it was a shuttle over to the airport. We were a little early for our flight, but it was nice to just sit and not have to worry about getting there in time. While we were waiting we purchased some blueberry muffins to eat on the plane. They were very tasty.

The plane ride back was okay. Hit some turbulence, but also got to play Cranium on the little screens that they use for the safety video. Learned some things.

The trip home from the airport was not as uneventful as I would have liked. Almost got into a wreck. Somebody decided to pull out in front of me going significantly slower than I was going (I think I could have walked faster than that guy was going). It was a little scary. But finally we made it home.

Summary
We took a travel book with us, but the book was a little old. From the book: Bus fare $.75; actual bus fare $1.25. The book even described Bostonian “Customs & Culture” but left out the customs of: using the horn to announce the presence of your car at ALL times and the need to travel in packs by limousine. We tried to eat some real Bostonian fare, but never got around to having the frappe.

Limo

Trip to Boston, MA, Sunday, June 4, 2006 cont.

Trip to Boston, MA
Sunday, June 4, 2006 cont.

After that we walked through the Public Gardens. Saw the Make Way for Ducklings statues and the Pedestrian Bridge. From there we headed to Newbury Street, which has a bunch of shops and restaurants. We had lunch at a Tapas restaurant. It was pretty good. I had some lobster ravioli.

Make Way for Ducklings Statue

Pedestrian Bridge in Public Gardens

We walked up to the Esplanade on the Charles River. It looked like a MIT sail club was out on the river.

View from the Esplanade

View of Back Bay from the Esplanade

View from the Esplanade

We walked over to the Hatch Shell. The inside of which appears to be wood. Very fancy looking.

The Shell

We crossed back over to Beacon Hill, and walked by Cheers. The outside is the Cheers from the television show. The inside is completely different. The Cheers bar in the Quincy Market area has the replica of the interior of the television bar.
From there we headed back to the Old State house where we purchased some shirts from the vendor. Then headed to Quincy Market to find us a cupcake and tea (coffee for Lisa). Outside Faneuil Hall, we stopped to watch some street performers. They appeared to be high school aged.

Street Performers outside Faneuil Hall

We found ourselves a cupcake, and just took a rest at the market for a little while. From there we headed over to Christopher Columbus Park, and the wharf.

View from Long Wharf

View from Long Wharf

Just kind of walked around the wharfs and tried to locate some information on the water taxi to the airport. Outside the Aquarium, we found another vender and purchased more shirts. Well, hoodies.

After a rest at the hotel, we walked to the Downtown Crossing T stop. From there we took the subway to the Massachusetts stop. We walked up Massachusetts toward Tremont. On our way we past by this cool little jazz club. Unfortunately some of the buildings around it were boarded up. Then we headed up Tremont. We were trying to find this restaurant that we read about in this book we checked out at one of the stores we stopped in. The restaurant is called Sibling Rivalry. Turns out that the restaurant is a very lo-o-o-ng distance from the Mass. Ave stop.

Sibling Rivalry is a restaurant owned by two brothers, both chefs. The menu is separated into 3 columns. One column is Chef Dave and another is Chef Bob. The middle column is the similar ingredient between the two choices. The food was very good. We had some vegetable called salsify. We had to remember the name so that we could look it up when we got home. It was an ingredient listed in one of our dishes, but we had no idea what it was. We went under the assumption that if it was being served in the meal then it was something edible.[http://www.siblingrivalryboston.com/home.htm]

After dinner, we ended up walking back to the hotel.

Trip to Boston, MA , Sunday, June 4, 2006 (Black Heritage Trail)

Trip to Boston, MA
Sunday, June 4, 2006 (Black Heritage Trail)

Sunday was another rainy day. Not quite as bad as Saturday though, so that was good. Our first stop – breakfast. We had some scrumptious bagels across the street from the Irish Famine statue…I just realized the irony of that… Then it was of to the Black Heritage Trail. Sadly, this trail is not well marked. We found some of the sites marked on the map, but many others were left undiscovered.

Robert Gould Shaw/54th Massachusetts Regiment Memorial

African American History Museum

Plaque along the Black Heritage Trail

Plaque along the Black Heritage Trail

Plaque along the Black Heritage Trail

Plaque along the Black Heritage Trail

Plaque along the Black Heritage Trail

Charles Street Meeting House

While we were in the Beacon Hill area, looking for Black Heritage sites, we came across the Beacon Hill Art Walk. Local residents opened up their private courtyards for artists to set up “shops”. We were walking through as many of the artists were just beginning to display their artwork. It was quite an array of different artists: photographers, contemporary painters, artists reminiscent of the Renaissance painters, as well as mixed media artists and sculptors.

Trip to Boston, MA , Saturday, June 3, 2006

Trip to Boston, MA
Saturday, June 3, 2006

Saturday was a rainy day. We decided to head toward Boston Common and go to one of the places over that way for breakfast. First we stopped at Filene’s Basement to find Lisa something waterproof for the weather. Luckily she was able to find something, and it was only about $15.

For breakfast we went to Bagel Plus Café. I got some fresh squeezed grapefruit juice – Excellent!!! The food was good too. Lisa wasn’t too crazy about the coffee though. While we were eating the rain got really heavy. Luckily, by the time we were finished it had let up. It was still raining pretty steady, but not a torrential downpour.

Bagel Plus Café & Grill

We had planned on doing the Black Heritage Trail, but with the rain, we decided to put that off until Sunday (hoping the weather would be more favorable). We decided to go see Trinity Church and the Boston Public Library. We headed through the Common so we could go to the Central Burying Ground (Boston has quite a few cemeteries).

Trinity Church is beautiful. Unfortunately at the time of our visit I had black and white film in my camera so any pictures I have will not do the church justice. Also it was a cloudy so even if I had color film, don’t know that the windows would have been as spectacular on film.

We didn’t actually go into the Boston Public Library (“one of the first free public libraries in the world…”) as my feet hurt and I didn’t want to walk all that way. I also got a picture of the Tortoise and Hare sculpture in Copley Square that commemorates the runners of the Boston Marathon.

On the way back toward the hotel, we went through the Theater District. Lots of different and interesting shows going on. Saw a sign for a show about menopause, and a block or two later was Annie.

Menopause The Musical

Headed through Chinatown to the Friendship Arch.

Chinatown McDonalds

Chinatown Phone booth

Friendship Arch

We ended up back at the hotel a little earlier than we thought we would, so we walked past the hotel toward the waterfront. We found some cute little buildings over that way and some pubs and other restaurants. Caught a glimpse of the New England Aquarium, which we didn’t realize was so close to the hotel. We also found the Custom House, which we had spotted through our many walks through town. Also, we had a picture of it hanging in our hotel room.

Custom House

After our walk it was time to head back to the hotel to put on some dry clothes for lunch. Lunch was at Café Fleuri, which is located in Langham Hotel. Café Fleuri is known for its Saturday Chocolate Bar (offered September – June). After we had been seated our waiter came up to take our drink order and started to ask if we had been there before, then looked at me and said, “You’ve been here before.” Again, I was like, um, no. Apparently I have a twin that hangs out in Boston.

If you LOVE chocolate, Café Fleuri’s Chocolate Bar is the place for you. If you just sort of “like” chocolate, I don’t recommend it. It’s basically a chocolate buffet. They even had a crepe station. You picked out what you wanted in your crepe; some choices were: mixed berries (blueberries, strawberries and blackberries), strawberries, bananas, coconut, chocolate, m & m’s or similar type candy, etc. Then you take it to the chef where she made a chocolate crepe, then added your ingredients. You could even get it flambéed (which Lisa tried). Other selections: chocolate bread pudding with a choice of chocolate sauce or caramel sauce, chocolate crème brulee, chocolate truffles, a chocolate fountain, they even had chocolate sushi! You could even have hot chocolate, which we did try. [link to Chocolate Bar menu http://www.langhamhotels.com/langham/boston/dining/chocolate_bar_desserts06.pdf]

After the sugar coma wore off, we headed back to the room. As we were waiting for the elevator, there were a couple of other gentlemen waiting as well. One was this young-ish (20-30’s) black guy. He had on sunglasses and the hood of his sweatshirt on and appeared to be trying not to make eye contact with anyone. We all got in the elevator, and he was standing in front of Lisa and I. On his backpack we had some tags that had to do something with Sean Paul (R&B/Hip-Hop artist). Like passes or something. We knew he wasn’t Sean Paul (no entourage) but decided that he may have been part of the entourage. The rest of the trip, we heard Sean Paul music rather frequently.

So after our “star sighting” we went to the health club. There was quite a crowd in the whirlpool when we first got there so we headed to the sauna first. Then headed out to the whirlpool. Just kind of hung out for a while. Relaxed. I “massaged” my feet with the whirlpool jet. It was a nice little rest.

Our plan had been to head to Little Italy for dinner, but as it was still rainy, and cold, we decided to head to one of the pubs we passed earlier.

Mr. Dooley’s

We ended up at Mr. Dooley’s. We had a pint of Harpoon’s and split a burger and salad. Very tasty. Great fries. They were having live music at 9:30pm and we thought it would be cool to stay for that. But we finished dinner around 8 and didn’t think we should sit there for an hour and a half. So off we went. We headed up to Quincy Market and walked around there for a while. Made use of the restrooms. Then headed south. We decided to find a pub on the way back to the hotel. We passed this one Kitty O’Shea’s or something similar, but decided to find something else (can’t really remember why). We ended up down the street at the Black Rose.

The Black Rose

It was an interesting time at the Black Rose. We found some seats by the window and shared a pint of Harpoon’s UFO. Actually, I think it was more than a pint. It was a really big glass. We just kind of watched all the activity outside. Lots of people walking buy. Many, many limos going by; some stopping and letting people out in front of us, others going on. Watched a bunch of Navy men walk by the window. But they all went upstairs. Shortly after we got there, a bar employee came up and took our seats. Apparently they remove all the stools in the bar area around 9 pm. The Black Rose was also having live music at 9:30, so we decided to stick around for that. While we were waiting for the band, this guy came over to talk to us. He was pretty drunk, but funny. It was definitely an interesting experience.

The band finally came on. An Irish band. They were pretty good. I actually kind of knew one of the songs. The fiddle player was young and cute, and also a very good fiddle player and singer. We left shortly after he did his solo. Not because it was bad or anything, we were just tired.

Trip to Boston, MA , Friday, June 2, 2006 (beginning)

Trip to Boston, MA
Friday, June 2, 2006 (beginning)

Got up before 5 am to head to the airport. Because the metro would not get us there with enough time for our 6:45 flight, we drove down. The economy parking lot is…well hidden. We just kept driving; I figured we had made it back to Maryland by the time we reached the airport (Regan National Airport is on the Virginia side of DC). We managed to find a parking spot fairly easily, and close to a marker so we would be able to find it when we got back. Always an important part of any trip. Right as we were getting our luggage we saw the shuttle approaching the shuttle stop 2 rows away, so we hopped on. Got to the airport and got through check in fairly quickly. Apparently Lisa looks dangerous, as she had to go through the puffer machine (it’s this machine that looks similar to a metal detector but shoots blasts of air at you. Don’t really know what it’s for, but they had to go through a metal detector also. I think it concerns me that government employees seem to get stopped more than other people at airports…or maybe it’s just Lisa.) We got to our gate as they were boarding. So overall, no waiting.

The flight was pretty good. Not really any turbulence or anything. From Logan International (Boston) we took the bus (yes, mom, the bus, public transportation) downtown. From the station it was a about ¼ - ½ mile walk to the hotel. We joined the throngs of people headed to their place of employment for one more day of work. On our walk we got to see the mobile post office (a truck that sells stamps and stuff). We got to the street where our hotel was located, turned the corner, and there it was, the Langham Hotel.

Langham Hotel

We checked our bags with the concierge, got a couple maps from him and a recommendation for breakfast. Breakfast was definitely our first stop. I don’t know if we decided to go to Little Italy for breakfast or just decided to head north and that was the first place we found something to eat. We ate breakfast at Café Pompeii. Very tasty. The wall murals were amazing. I recommend it to any visitor.

The one thing that I really wanted to do while in Boston was to walk the Freedom Trail. It’s a 2.5 mile hike that takes you past most of the major historically significant sites of Boston.

The Freedom Trail Marker

On our way to breakfast we walked past the Old State House, Faneuil Hall and the Union Oyster House. We also passed by a farmer’s market. They were just starting so set up.

Old State House

Sam Adams statue outside Faneuil Hall

Union Oyster House

Farmers Market

Trip to Boston, MA , Friday, June 2, 2006 cont. (middle)

Trip to Boston, MA

Friday, June 2, 2006 cont. (middle)

After breakfast we tried to find Paul Revere’s house. While we were doing that, we past this little sculpture garden in front of a church. I was able to identify the St. Francis of Assisi statue. J Outside the house is where we ran into our first group of school children. We ran into quite a few other groups over the course of the day.

Paul Revere’s House

Plaque in North Square

Next stop on the red line (in our book and on our trolley map from the concierge the Freedom Trail was marked with a red line) was the Old North Church. To get there we walked through Paul Revere Mall. Before some of you get all excited, it’s mall as in “a usually public area often set with shade trees and designed as a promenade or as a pedestrian walk” (http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary). Although, there was a shirt vendor there. Anyway, next site was the Old North Church gift shop. This is where it is believed the Paul Revere purchased his lanterns. (Well, believed by me and Lisa any way.)

Paul Revere Statue

Old North Church

We took a quick peek into the church before it closed for a private function (a graduation, I think). We made a rest stop at the Old North Church visitor center. There we picked up a really good map of Boston. This turned into our favored map. Lisa’s previous map was too small. She thought my map (the trolley map) was too big. The visitor center map was just right. [If you are to ever visit Boston, I recommend finding a visitor center and get one of their maps. They truly are the best.] We continued uphill to Copps Hill Burial Ground.

Copps Hill Burial Ground

Copps Hill Burial Ground

Copps Hill Burial Ground

As we were crossing the street after the Burial Ground, I noticed a red line in the middle of the crosswalk. I joked with Lisa that it was the Freedom Trail. Turns out, I was right. There is a red line through town. On concrete it’s actually a painted red line, in the brick sidewalks it’s a red brick line with some other stone on the outside. It even went across the bridge. Who ever thought of that is a genius. It was really easy to follow, and made it easier to find your way around.