Boston, October 2019

A weekend in Boston to celebrate birthdays and help Allie get settled into her apartment on Irving Street in Beacon Hill.

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Friday, October 11

Our afternoon flight from BWI was scheduled to leave at 3:25pm but a nor’easter off the Massachusetts coast cut traffic into Logan and delayed us. We ended up flying almost 3 hours late, arriving around 8pm and missing our dinner reservation at Ma Maison, where we’d had a good meal the last time we were in town.

We met Allie at the Wyndham Boston Beacon Hill Hotel, where we were staying just a block from her apartment, and where we had stayed two years before when she lived at Emerson Place. We had dinner in the lobby restaurant because it was raining and we didn’t want to venture further afield. Dinner was adequate, a burger for me, shrimp po’boy for Barb and soup for Allie. We headed back to the room and watched the Nationals beat the Cardinals in first game of the 2019 National League Championship Series.

Saturday, October 12

I took my first Lyft ride to the airport to pick up the rental car (actually, a minivan to ensure we had space to carry things) I reserved for the day’s activities. A few days before this trip, I finally succumbed to subscribing to Lyft (as opposed to Uber, for no good reason other than I like the little Lyft light that lets you know it’s them). I had resisted because I didn’t want yet another company knowing my whereabouts, but the convenience of having them come to me when needed won out.

I fetched the girls and we headed to the Fenway Target to get Allie various homegoods. Several hours and $600 later we loaded two cartloads of stuff into the minivan and went around the corner to Bed, Bath and Beyond. We found a few more odds and ends there, then grabbed lunch at the new Time Out Boston marketplace.

After shopping around at the various food stalls, Barb got a roast beef sandwich, I got a spicy chicken sandwich and curry potstickers, while Allie got a whitefish salad with veggies and squisito peppers (mostly for me). All were pretty good, a step up from my experience at the original Time Out Market in Lisbon.

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In the afternoon, we carted things up the three flights to Allie’s apartment and commenced to clean and arrange things. I made the trip up and down several times and am glad I don’t have to do that every day. It took me a while to recover and stop sweating.

Barb mostly worked on the kitchen and bathroom, lining shelves and finding homes for things. I put together a small cube table/cabinet for the bathroom and was the designated cardboard box flattener. We worked on the apartment until about 5:00pm, making some good headway, then Barb and I went back to Target and Bed Bath and Beyond to get a couple of final items. I dropped Barb back at the hotel and dropped the minivan back at the airport.

Barb had put in a vote for a different steak frites place other than Ma Maison (unsatisfactory frites), so I’d made an 8:30pm dinner reservation at Aquitaine, the earliest time they had available. It worked out well because between getting the car back to the airport, getting back to the hotel and having a shower, that was the earliest we could have made it. Dan came along to dinner and we had a nice meal. We shared two plates of escargot which were really excellent along with the homemade baguettes. The steak frites passed Barb’s test, I had a nice sole meuniere and Allie had scallops. I learned from Dan that I missed the second game of the NLCS that afternoon — I hadn’t even realized it was happening — but the Nats won so all was well.

Sunday, October 13

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We’d arranged to meet Jessie Diamond for dim sum at Hei La Moon at 11:00am. Jessie, the granddaughter of longtime Fisher friend Jessie O’Neill, just started her masters program in public relations at Emerson and recently had connected with Allie. Dim sum was good and it was nice catching up with Jessie. We all took a short walk around Chinatown before sending her off on the T.

We had also reserved a 3:00pm afternoon tea for the girls at the Boston Public Library’s Courtyard Restaurant. That morning, I checked the library’s website and learned they offered free tours of the building, so we made a point of getting there in time for the 2:00pm tour. It was an hour-long art and architecture tour which we enjoyed.

My favorite areas were two blank spaces, one the final scene in John Singer Sargent’s gallery that was supposed to be The Sermon on the Mount, the other a large space in Bates Hall, the main reading room. In both cases, the artist died before the painting was finished. Rather than commission someone else, the powers that be left the space blank. I’m not sure why exactly that appeals to me, but it does as some sort of Monty Python ironic joke.

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While the girls enjoyed their tea, I took in a special exhibit called “America Transformed: Mapping the 19th Century“. It included a variety of maps that help tell America’s story, and I’m pleased to find that the exhibit is also online, hopefully to stay. I found a number of the maps fascinating, particularly two showing the spread of the U.S. population (“excluding Indians”) from 1790 -1860 and one showing the percentage of slaves by county in 1860. In general, the exhibit paid attention to Native American and African American viewpoints as the country was transformed, reflecting today’s broader perspective on what had been a white man’s history.

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After an hour or so in the exhibit, I found a seat in the Bates Reading Room and read a bit of “The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books,” which I felt was appropriate given the location. They started booting us out of the library at 4:45pm so I found Barb and Allie wrapping up their tea. We put Barb in an Uber back to the hotel while Allie and I walked back along the Charles, a very pleasant stroll.

We took it easy in the hotel for a while before venturing out for a light dinner. We thought we’d hit an Italian place nearby, Antonio’s, but it was closed on Sunday (it looks worth a try some other time), so we wandered down Charles Street, Beacon Hill’s main drag. We went past several blocks of cute shops but few restaurants, and one we found, Artu, was not happy to seat us. We headed back toward the hotel and ended up at the Hill Tavern across the street. I had a passable set of pork taco appetizers, Barb had a bowl of clam chowder and Allie a Caesar salad. Nothing great, but good enough. Barb rounded out the evening with a slice of pizza to go from a nearby dive, Felcaro Pizzaria.

Monday, October 14

Columbus Day, or what is now becoming Indigenous Peoples’ Day, which honestly I’d not heard of until this year but has been growing for 30 years. Had I just missed it or not paid attention? Same effect.

Allie worked from home in the morning and we hung out in the hotel room until our noon checkout. Barb got a breakfast sandwich from Au Bon Pain next to the hotel. Our flight was not until 6pm, so the plan was to go to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and also have lunch there. Barb had gotten some bad news from work and was starting to fret about it, making her less enthusiastic about spending an afternoon in a museum, but it was a holiday, after all, and we had time with Allie who had taken the afternoon off.

We carted our luggage up to Allie’s place, which was looking much more organized and livable. We checked our flight and found that it was already delayed, prompting us to look for alternative earlier flights. We decided to abort the museum and get to the airport for a 3:30pm flight, which gave us time to get a bit of lunch nearby. Allie decided on The Emory just off Boston Common. I had a decent ham sandwich, Allie a burger and Barb a steak sandwich. All well enough. Nearby is a steak place called Mooo that looks good for another visit.

We said our goodbyes and headed over to the airport. Our original flight was no longer delayed and the Southwest counter person at first said it would cost us $150 per person to switch to the earlier flight. She then said “Wait a minute” and after cajoling her computer for a bit declared the change fee was only $5 each. We took it. We each had middle seats, but the flight got us in at 5:30pm, giving Barb some time to see Manny, get settled and then wrestle with work at home. Trip complete.

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It’s always fun to see Allie and learn a little bit more about Boston and the area. It’s nice that she’s back in the Beacon Hill / West End area which is a convenient base to explore the city. In future visits it would be nice to see the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and also the Mapparium. If the Wyndham is going to keep charging top dollar, we might try staying at the The Liberty or the new Whitney Hotel nearby. We have new restaurants to try as well, including Mooo and Antonio’s. We don’t have another visit planned right away, but I’m sure we’ll get up there again next year, maybe in the spring or summer.