Boston, August 2021

We return to Boston to see Allie and spend a few days in Chatham on Cape Cod.

Sunday, August 29 – Drive to Boston

We drove up to Boston, leaving before 8am to be sure to arrive around 4pm, in plenty of time for the evening’s John Mulaney show that Allie got tickets for the two of us. The drive was crowded with traffic in both directions, with some folks returning from vacations and evidently lots of students and families arriving for college. We opted for the GW Bridge route through New York City and I know I selected Route 15 through Connecticut but by the time we got to the bridge, Google routed us further west on I-684. I had to take it on faith that this route was a few minutes shorter at that moment. I will say that, despite the traffic on the bridge, the route through the Bronx and Westchester County up the Henry Hudson Parkway, Cross-County Parkway and Hutchinson River Parkway was as straightforward as we’ve done. No routing through a mall parking lot. I don’t know what to make of Google Maps, sometimes.  

We arrived to a welcome greeting from Allie and Perri by about 4:00, on schedule. Our guest apartment at the Kensington was not ready but it didn’t matter much as we unloaded stuff into Allie’s apartment while they scrambled to find housekeepers to clean our room. We had time to order dinner from the Penang Restaurant and the Dumpling Cafe next door. Green curry for me, nasi lemak for Allie, and roti to share; scallion pancakes and seafood dumplings for Barb, though she didn’t like her dumplings…just one bite and rejected.

We left Barb with Perri and the TV and headed to the 7pm show. There was an opening act whose name I didn’t catch (and can’t find it anywhere, after the fact) but he was pretty good. The next tall black young comic that makes it big, I can say it was him. Mulaney himself came on and performed what is called his “From Scratch” show, which was largely about his recent drug intervention and stint in rehab. I didn’t know about all that but evidently it was common knowledge. The show itself was fun, in a self-critical, self-absorbed way. This was the last of 21 sold out performances in Boston and part of a nationwide tour that no doubt will eventually end up being a Netflix or HBO special. It will be interesting to see what eventually becomes the recorded document. Meanwhile, Mulaney has to navigate a tabloid-worthy divorce, new celebrity girlfriend (Olivia Munn), maintain sobriety and rebuild a career that I didn’t know had gone off the rails. It’s a lot to deal with, but reflects the perils of success in our entertainment age. I wish him luck, I think, until it comes out that he’s done something awful to someone, which seems entirely possible.

One of his best bits involved flogging the t-shirts for the show, which included the name of the Boston theater, The Wilbur. This being his last show, he still had a large inventory of shirts and begged everyone to buy more than one. He said that, of course you won’t wear it anywhere important, but years from now you’ll find this faded t-shirt and say, “Oh yeah, that was the night I caught Covid.” This was the first actual indoor theater show I’ve attended in nearly two years. Everyone wore masks, except the performers. I felt reasonably safe; time will tell if it was indeed the night I caught Covid. I hope not. But I didn’t buy a t-shirt, either.

The nice thing about a 7pm comedy show is that it was over by 9pm and we were back in Allie’s apartment just a few minutes later — the theater was just two blocks away. Our apartment was ready and we settled ourselves in and still had time to watch a couple of episodes of Ted Lasso, which we enjoyed better once we figured out how to get closed-captioning. 

While we had our fun in Boston, Hurricane Ida barreled into Louisiana and the Afghanistan evacuation reached its penultimate day with a couple of thwarted ISIS attacks. After Ted Lasso, I got caught up on the news and watched a rerun of the day’s BMW golf tournament at Caves Valley that ended with a 6-hole sudden death playoff that even I couldn’t make it to the end of.

Monday, August 30 – Boston

We gathered ourselves and went to breakfast at Tatte Bakery, a block from Allie’s apartment. I had a bowl of spinach and corn shakshuka, recommended by Allie. It was very tasty and filling. Later, Barb headed to the pool for some reading time. I worked on this journal and did some reading while Allie had a regular working day in her apartment. It was a low-key, relaxing day in Boston. I felt like maybe I should take a walk or do something more active or educational, but it was nice to have a down day. 

Later in the afternoon I felt compelled to at least get outside for a little while, plus I needed to make a stop at the liquor store across the street for some whisky to replenish Allie’s supply. I decided to walk first to the Boston Common and found a shady bench where I could people-watch and listen to the final episode of the Revolutions podcast on the Paris Commune revolt of 1871. It’s an era I knew very little about and I am now slightly more educated on the matter. It’s the end of Season 8 and I’m set to start the Mexican Revolution next. I feel like I need to take some time to assess the run of European revolutions from 1789-1871 which were critical to the formation of Germany, Italy and the whole of Europe. I’ve now learned a lot more about the rise of national identities and constitutional democracies but I need to tie some threads together to gain better insight into the questions I started with about connections between these revolutions and the nature of today’s nation state. More thoughts to come…which eventually resulted in History Lesson, Part One.

We spent a little while in the afternoon with Allie after her work hours. We tried to get a good photo of Perri that Allie could submit to her apartment building’s Pet of the Week competition. Here are the best of the ones I took. It’s up to Allie now.

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Dinner that night was at Stillwater, a Boston restaurant near Allie’s that unfortunately now has to contend with a recent Matt Damon movie of the same name — makes web searching a little difficult. We got popcorn for the table — Barb got a version just with salt and butter while Allie and I got the Everything Bagel seasoning. Barb couldn’t find anything else on the menu to her liking which caused Allie and me some consternation, but at this point I’ve become used to it. Allie got a mac and cheese with pulled pork while I got a crispy-skin salmon on risotto that was quite yummy. We each shared a bite with Barb and that was her dinner. We also got deviled eggs for the table but mostly for me. 

Back at Allie’s apartment we ran through the remaining Ted Lasso episodes, up to number 6 or 7 which is the most recent. The Christmas one and the rom-com episodes were both cute and well-constructed. It’s not the world’s greatest television but it entertains all three of us and that’s pretty rare these days. I capped the night off back in our apartment with more tennis from the US Open.

Tuesday, August 31 – Boston to Chatham

This was our day to check out of the Kensington apartment and head down to Cape Cod. We got ourselves mostly out by 10 or so and went to breakfast with Allie at Cafe Bonjour where we’d eaten the previous time in Boston. Barb and Allie again shared two crepes, one with smoked salmon and one with strawberries. I had a Mediterranean Hummus Tartine which was quite nice. We were fully packed and out the door by noon or so.

The drive down to Chatham in Cape Cod was easy, about 90 minutes, and traffic on this Tuesday was negligible. We got to our hotel, the Chatham Tides, by 1:30 and decided to try to check in even though we were early. Fortunately, our room was ready and we quickly settled in. We got a two-bedroom “suite” with a nice view of the water and small sandy beach. There’s some nice counter space by the window which is where I camped out, watching the water while typing, distractedly.

For the first afternoon, however, Barb headed down to the beach while Allie and I sat on our porch for a while before taking a walk down the beach. The beach was littered with dozens of horseshoe crab shells and what seemed like millions of small white shells. We later guessed they were likely cockle shells, since we are adjacent to Cockle Beach and Cockle Cove. But looking at the pictures of cockles, now I don’t think so. A handy blogger has catalogued a bunch of Cape Cod shells and now we think they were ladyslipper shells. 

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To cap off this restful afternoon, we got in the car for a short explore around Chatham, a pleasant, touristy little town. A lot of the stores appear to be closed already even though it’s before Labor Day. We passed a small farmers’ market (a small market, not small farmers…well, maybe small farmers but not pejoratively small) with a kettle corn stand and stopped just before it closed. Barb got one of his last bags. Ten minutes later, the stand was packed up and disappeared. Providence! Barb was very happy. Allie and I found a liquor store open and got a supply of wine and ciders to get us through the day or two of prospective rain to come.

After touring through the town, we stopped at our dinner destination, The Talkative Pig. We found that they were only doing take-out business. They explained that they were very short staffed — all the college kids had departed and the H-visa kids from Europe had gone home. No one else wanted restaurant jobs. It made it easy for us to select pizzas to go but we also got some pasta and chicken salads for the rainy day to come. Barb found a prosciutto-wrapped asparagus thing that appealed to her. Well stocked, we headed back to the hotel. We had a fine dinner on the porch outside in time for sunset.

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In the evening, I watched tennis while the girls worked on a jigsaw puzzle, more or less together. As we prepared for bed, I figured out the air conditioner controls and closed captioning on the TV, making our stay just that little bit more like being at home.

Wednesday, September 1 – Chatham

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Wednesday we awoke to a matte gray sky and calm water in advance of the remnants of Hurricane Ida. The weather report made it plain that we would start to see some light rain this day and heavy rain overnight into Thursday. It was going to be tough to get out of the room Thursday morning so we wanted to have everything we needed for the day. Once everyone was awake, we headed out to breakfast, first stopping at Marion’s Pie Shop to get things for the next day — a spinach quiche for Allie and me, and a ham and cheese croissant for Barb. We went on to discover that our top breakfast choice, the Chatham Filling Station, was closed until Friday. We used Yelp to find Lily’s Diner around the corner where we sat at the counter and had a very acceptable breakfast: eggs and bacon for the girls, a spinach and goat cheese omelette for me. Barb loved watching the lone cook at the griddle work his way through all the breakfast orders.

The rain started to drizzle a little as we explored a block or so of Chatham for Barb to get a gift for someone at work…I guess the person who was acting for her. She ended up getting something at Black Dog and got Allie a sweatshirt because she was a little chilly. Thanks, Mom!

We came back to our hotel room and worked off our breakfast, so to speak. I tapped out this journal. Barb did her emails and Allie read a book for a couple of hours. I set myself up so I could keep an eye on the weather and the water which is how I happened to see a seal going by, which caused some excitement. That was very much the wildlife highlight, other than a lot of bird activity and some occasional splashes of schools of fish being chased by some larger fish, as best I could guess.

After a sufficient length of time, we ventured back out for lunch at Mac’s Chatham Fish & Lobster where we got some clam chowder, clam strips and fish and chips. The place was busy and the fried food was devilishly good. We were all happy if not healthier with that meal.

We decided to sign up for a whale watching trip from Boston on Saturday. This is the same trip I enjoyed in July, 2017; I think the girls will like it. Barb also decided to sign up for a visit to the local Shark Center; neither Allie nor I are interested, but it will keep Barb busy for an hour or so and get us out of the hotel room. 

The drizzly afternoon was very low key with us in the hotel room, doing much the same things: some emails, some reading, some puzzling, some writing, some napping. For a while, a family was playing on the beach. We watched the tragedy of a kid kicking his football into the water and seeing it float away in the breeze. 

Our dinner that evening was at Delmar. It had been a tough reservation to get and happily it turned out to be worth the trouble. We (mostly Allie and I) shared clam chowder and wood grilled oyster appetizers. For entrees, I got grilled cod over a creamed corn and crabmeat concoction. Allie had a Portuguese linguini with clams and sausage. Both were very tasty. Barb just had a Caprese salad with heirloom tomatoes that looked good.

We made it back to the hotel room to hunker down for the evening to wait for Ida to pass. We watched as the US Open in NY was washed out and more than 3” of rain fell in an hour, shattering the former record for NYC that had been set just a couple of weeks earlier. As we got ready for bed, we started to get tornado warnings on the Cape which got Barb very worried. I kept vigil past 1am until she finally went to sleep.

Thursday, September 2 – Chatham

I awoke real early, like 5:30am, mainly to have a look at what was happening with the weather. The radar showed that the storm was barreling through Massachusetts and the Cape just a few miles west of us. Chatham and the elbow of Cape Cod stuck out in the clear, just beyond the flood and tornado warnings. We dodged a bullet for most of the night. The seas in the morning were full of white caps and the waves hit the shore at 2-3 feet, I estimated. Nothing really severe, but much rougher than anything we’d seen in our couple of days here. 

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Around 6:30am we got a short dose of intense storm with wind, lashing rain and lightning but it was mostly over within an hour and the girls mostly slept through it. I enjoyed watching the storm roll through from our oceanfront perch. I was especially thankful that we stayed dry and kept electricity through the night and morning.

By 8am the storm had mostly passed. The skies stayed grey with a few passing light showers through the morning. I heated up our spinach quiche procured the day before at Marion’s Pie Shop and Allie and I enjoyed a tasty breakfast. Barb’s orange roll from the same pie shop didn’t turn out so well. Sorry for that. She chose poorly.

We had a low-key morning reading and doing emails. I eventually fell back in bed for another hour’s sleep. When I got up, Allie and I went on a beach walk thinking we might find something wonderful washed up. No such luck, and before long we got chilly and headed back inside. Eventually it was time for lunch and we dug into our Greek pasta salad and chicken salad also procured earlier from The Talkative Pig. Both were quite delicious.

The time came to take Barb to the Shark Center at 2:15pm. Allie and I dropped her off then headed town to get a sweatshirt for me since the weather had turned much cooler. We found one quickly in town and then headed to the Chatham Lighthouse (more history) and beach. The Atlantic Ocean was hitting the outer banks of North Beach Island with full force, very majestic. The sky cleared to a lovely sunny afternoon.

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Barb’s time in the Shark Center was limited to an hour so we went back to pick her up. She was not deeply impressed with the Shark Center but then it is geared mainly to little kids.

The rest of the afternoon we were back at the hotel. Barb went down to the beach and got a chair to fall asleep on. Allie and I sat on the deck and read. We killed several quiet, pleasant hours.

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I finally sorted out the difference between the Chatham Inn and the Chatham Bars Inn, both very upscale hotels with nice restaurants, neither of which we went in. The Chatham Inn, a Relais & Chateaux hotel tucked quietly on Main Street, is the more famous with a Michelin star restaurant, Cuvee. The Chatham Bars Inn is a much more imposing resort close to the harbor; it’s even more expensive than the Chatham Inn but has much worse reviews. I have a feeling it was being trolled because a number of recent 1-star reviews used a lot of the same language. No matter for us, though, because we skipped them both. Not our crowd, I decided, and neither Barb nor Allie seemed to mind. We can pretend to be gourmets at the Inn at Little Washington once in a while, but it’s not our natural habitat or price range. Call it the curse of the middlebrow. We are what we are.

Allie had a work phone call scheduled for 7pm, then it was off to dinner at Buca’s Tuscan Roadhouse. Once we found a place to park — we had to wait for someone to leave the too-small lot — we were given an outdoor table facing the parking lot so we couldn’t help but watch the subsequent coming and going. We shared Cacio Pepe as a sort of appetizer which was a not-so-great cheese and black pepper layer over some really nice homemade pasta. I had a lovely sauteed sole, Allie had an oven roasted cod with pistachio crumbs and Barb had a nice veal picatta that she actually ate most of. Well stuffed, we returned to the room for more tennis and a good night’s sleep.

Friday, September 3 – Chatham to Boston

For our last day in Chatham, we took a leisurely morning to check out of the hotel before heading into town for breakfast. We went to the Chatham Filling Station which had been closed earlier in the week. We got a table next to their mural of the United States and had fun running through state trivia while we waited for our meals. I finally chose a Nor’Easter bowl of grits with goat cheese and poached eggs (unfortunately the eggs were poached all the way through — they would have been better runny). Barb and Allie had more standard plates of eggs and bacon, though Allie got a bowl of grits as a side. That’s my girl!

Barb dropped off some completed jigsaw puzzles at the Community Center, to the confusion of the old man at the desk. She had us keep the car running and we made a quick getaway. The drive back to Boston was easy and we were reunited with Perri for the afternoon. Barb went to the pool for a little more sun and reading while Allie went to the gym. I watched tennis and dozed for a while until Allie returned. We started watching the Paul McCartney series 3,2,1 featuring Rick Rubin and Paul’s reminisces on various Beatle tunes and times. We both enjoyed the series more than we thought we would.

Dinner that evening was at Row 34, a trendy seafood restaurant in the Fort Point Channel area near Seaport (and Allie’s office) that Allie’s been wanting to try. We prefaced the dinner with a walk around Seaport for Barb’s benefit which I’m not sure was deeply appreciated. Once at the restaurant, Allie and I shared some nice oysters — she has developed a taste for them and I am gaining one. I had a very good halibut entree over a really nice fresh corn and white bean succotash (I could do that sometime) while Allie had a lobster roll (creamy) and Barb had an appetizer bowl of steamed mussels and a side of french fries which passed her test. A winning dinner for everyone.

As we finished dinner and walked out of the restaurant, we heard fireworks. We headed back to the Seaport waterfront and watched a good show over the harbor. It seems to have been some sort of Labor Day weekend make-up for the 4th of July. A nice start to the holiday weekend and the end of our vacation.

It was a special Friday at the US Open. In the afternoon we watched most of an electric match between Stefano Tsitsipas and 18-year old Spanish phenom Carlos Alcaraz. It was the first time I’d seen Alcaraz and his crushing shots and speed. Very impressive and entertaining. That match was followed in the evening by Naomi Osaka against another 18-year old, Leylah Fernandez, an unknown (literally – I’d never heard of her) Canadian. Fernandez played a terrific match as Osaka melted down, which was sad to see but remarkable from Fernandez’ perspective. Francis Taifoe played another very entertaining match against Rublev that went on past 2am — I gave up a little after 1am. Fernandez would ultimately make it to the final before losing to another teen sensation, Emma Radacanu.

Saturday, September 4 – Boston

On our final day, we headed out about 10am to get to Long Wharf for our whale watching excursion. It was a gorgeous day, sunny in the 70s with a nice breeze. The New England Aquarium Whale Watch boat was full with several hundred tourists but we found a railing to hang onto while we cruised through Boston Harbor and then for an hour or so out toward Provincetown. I was polite and didn’t take any pictures of Barb or Allie in the breeze. After a while, Barb claimed an empty seat, making the ride more comfortable. The sea was calm and the day was about as pretty as you could hope.

We had a great 90 minutes or so of whale watching, seeing multiple pods of humpbacks including a mother and calf (I didn’t get a good picture of them together but we saw them very clearly). The captain is experienced at getting reasonably close to the whales without disturbing them, giving us good views.

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As we moved between pods of whales, we all keep a lookout for whale spouts. I happened to notice a spout about a quarter mile in the distance off the rear of the boat (ok, the stern) and watched in amazement as the whale did a full breach, coming out of the water and making a huge splash. It happened too quickly for everyone to see or get pictures, but I and a few others were lucky to see it from start to finish. Very majestic.

It was nearly as cool to come upon a whale doing a repeated flipper slap. I did my best to capture it in still photos but wasn’t clever enough to turn on the video. Nevertheless, here’s a pretty good flap sequence.

I finally thought to turn on the video setting and caught one last dive before we left for the ride back to Boston.

The aquarium uses these tours to help catalog the whales and on the ride back they were able to tell us the names and histories of the whales. I think we saw eight in total.

I’ve now seen humpback whales four times: first in Alaska on our cruise in 2001 which was awesome but there was no jumping or flapping, on a similar New England Aquarium tour from Boston in 2017 which was a good trip but no jumps or flaps, in 2019 in the Dominican Republic where I saw one whale doing a tail flap but the trip was too wet and rough to take photos or even enjoy very much. The journey this day was the most fun and I’m delighted Barb and Allie were able to experience it.

Dinner that night was a return visit to Mooo, which had been a hit with us our previous visit in May. This time, we shared the tuna tartare and the wagyu dumpling appetizers. Both were good but neither really stood out. The dumplings were a little doughy and the tuna was kind of a dressed up poke. I had Australian ribeye with au poivre sauce — very good and cheaper than the steak au poivre entree…plus I got bone marrow butter and the little sprig of rosemary to spread it. Super rich. Girls shared a filet this time, rather than a rib eye. We got the sampler of sides again: mashed potatoes, creamed spinach, succotash and fries. I also succumbed to my temptation for the “Tater Tots” which featured Tiger sauce but I was disappointed; they were blobs of fried mash potatoes with a little bowl of sauce to dip. An unnecessary choice. The sampler was more than we needed. Barb loved the fries, Allie loved the spinach and I liked the succotash. We all liked the mashed potatoes. 

Allie and I finished the evening back at her apartment with more Paul McCartney rather than watching Djokovic play tennis. Though he was going for a record-breaking win, I (and lots of people) have no love for Djokovic. Plenty of respect, but I don’t find him compelling to watch. It’s hard to say why.

Sunday, September 5 – Boston to Home

We said our farewells to Allie and Perri and headed back home. The drive, being the day before Labor Day, was pretty easy and stress-free. We made it in our typical 8 hours. It was good to be home and good to see Manny. We came back on Sunday so Barb could spend one last day at the pool on Labor Day, which she did very happily.

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In all, this was a good, relaxing trip. It was great to see Allie and Perri, of course, which was the main purpose. Our accommodations in Boston and Chatham worked out very well. The dinners and other meals were all quite good. I’m glad we were able to plan a lot of the trip in advance — we wouldn’t have been able to get the rooms or dinner places if we hadn’t made reservations well in advance. But I’m glad we also had flexibility to work around the hurricane and also add the whale watching on short notice. I think the working girls had a nice little break. No one caught Covid, we weren’t particularly inconvenienced and everyone was pretty good about wearing masks.

I think we’re getting better at this travel thing. It will be nice to stretch our wings and go someplace new pretty soon, but we wait for the virus and the lunatics around us to improve. Until then, we have no specific plans. We think maybe we will go back to Boston in November to see Allie once again, and she may come down for the Christmas holidays. But time will tell.