A multi-pronged Aug-Sep 2018 trip to Boston to visit Allie, then to Lisbon via Dublin to spend time in Portugal with Laurie, culminating in a return to Boston to meet Barb for a long weekend.
Previous Post | Next Post | Trip Home
Thursday, September 6: Boston
A day on my own in Boston and a chance to acclimate to the East Coast timezone. I woke after a good night’s sleep pondering ideas of timelines and songs of history. In my morning daydream I extended the metaphor to certain folks being players of music, others the audience, still others the mechanics of producing and delivering music. Some folks band together in groups. Some are soloists. Trump is an exuberant, cacophonous jazz player who doesn’t get along well with others. Congress is several different classical orchestras playing 18th century canon but rarely the same piece at the same time. Other cultures have their own favorites. Goes on and on. It made more sense at the time.
Got the free Hampton Inn breakfast which is adequate but the same everywhere, which I guess is the point. Then I did some laundry in the guest washing machine — not as fancy as the Portugal ones but it got the job done. I wrote some and read a little, then around noon I headed out to Cambridge on the T. The hotel shuttle dropped me off at the Wood Island T station near the airport and I navigated my way to the Central station in Cambridge, which involved three different train lines. I felt a small sense of accomplishment when I actually arrived without having gotten on any wrong trains.
I headed down Massachusetts Avenue to the Little Donkey, a “global tapas” place which I’d picked off of Yelp. I had a Mexican shrimp cocktail followed by a pickle-brined fried chicken sandwich. Both were good, though I didn’t specify the spicy version of the sandwich and got a “normal” one instead. Probably just as well. Washed it down by a whiskey cocktail with orange and lemon flavors that was decent followed by a dark beer in a can that was good but now I can’t remember what it was. It was a slow mid-afternoon time at the restaurant, but there was a constant flow of large young bearded men with tattoos who were interchangeably bar keepers, servers or patrons. They all seemed to know one another. There were also a few young tattooed women who were smaller and didn’t have beards but they seemed to fit in just as well. I don’t know why big beards and tattoos have become the current hipster look. It’s not flattering. I felt old.
My plan was to walk up to Harvard, wander around a while, write, and then get an early dinner at The Dumpling House. That plan was short circuited by a thundershower that came through just as I was getting to the Dumpling House, a few blocks short of Harvard. I ducked in to the restaurant even though I’d just ate. To ride out the storm, I went ahead and ordered onion cakes and soup dumplings, both of which I couldn’t resist. I ate half of the very good onion cakes and saved the rest for later. The soup dumplings were also tasty, though I inevitably ate the first one too soon while it was piping hot. As the storm died down and I finished the last dumpling, I ordered a plate of spicy cold noodles to go for an evening snack. I was as full as I could be. I don’t know how restaurant travel show people can eat all the time. It’s also expensive to go around trying things, but I guess they’re not really paying, are they?
After the storm cleared a little, I resumed my walk up Massachusetts Avenue toward Harvard. I encountered a wild turkey grazing in a little grass in the median of the road. And another one a block later. There must be a story there. Looking into it later, I find there are lots of articles about wild turkeys in the city, mostly dealing with them as a public nuisance (more) or just taking for granted that they now wander the streets. There’s seemingly very little actual knowledge or curiosity about their origin (are they really descendants of the 37 turkeys re-introduced into western Massachusetts in 1972?), numbers or nesting habits. Nor is there much appreciation of their potential as urban legend or local folk heroes; there is a Facebook page (actual page) but not much is being done with it. I would think the idle intellectuals of Harvard and Cambridge would be all over this, but evidently not. There should at least be a children’s book or something. Barb would probably note that packs of wild turkeys wandering the streets are a sign of impending apocalypse, and another reason not to visit Boston.
I continued my walk, poking around Harvard Yard, the campus of Harvard University. I’d been in the vicinity a number of times over my life, but I don’t think I’d ever walked the campus. The air felt a little more rarefied as smart-looking people bustled about in the dripping rain, but there wasn’t really anyplace dry for me to sit and watch people without feeling like a creepy old man. For that I had to go a bit further into Harvard Square, more of a shopping district and commercial/transportation hub. There I found a bench under a tree where I sat, caught up on current events on my phone and people watched for a good while. The weather cleared a bit and the square had a busy flow of commuters, tourists and students coming to and fro. It was fun for a while trying to screen passers-by into different categories until I realized this was precisely what Big Brother companies and states are trying to accomplish with racial profiling, AI and facial recognition. Then I started scanning for cameras and realized I was probably being watched and profiled at that very moment. That’s when I started to feel like a terrorist and decided it was time to go. Thanks, police state.
It had been a decent day. I hadn’t really accomplished as much as I wanted, but decided to head back to the hotel before dark. I was now a pro at using the T and caught the hotel shuttle from the Wood Island station again. Back in my room, I settled in to watch the US Open women’s semifinals. Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka advanced in entertaining matches. I had my leftover scallion pancake and some cold noodles and called it a night.
You must be logged in to post a comment.