Massachusetts Getaway - Part 1 (Boston)

For Christmas, the big gift Josh gave me was a piece of paper. But on that piece of paper, it said that we were going to take a little getaway – just the two of us – to Boston & Martha’s Vineyard sometime in 2011. I think initially he had intended on having more of the trip planned by that point, but he realized that I needed to be involved in the planning too, so all he had really done at that point was contact our travel agent as well as our friends Merri & Nick to get some recommendations. We got the trip all planned, and this past Friday (July 22) was our departure date. I had planned on going into work for the morning, but my car had other ideas – dead battery. We couldn’t even get it jumped, so I had to wait for a tow truck to come & tow it to the shop, which basically took all morning to replace the battery. They finished up just in time for us to head to the airport.

Anyway, so we arrived in Boston Friday evening & headed out from our hotel to find somewhere to eat dinner. We ended up at Legal Test Kitchen (or, LTK).  The food was good, but it was dark and loud, and I definitely did not feel trendy enough to be eating there.

Saturday morning we got up & had planned to take the T out to Fenway Park for a tour. Only, the weather decided to be uncooperative, and it was pouring. We headed out there anyway, hoping it would clear up. We ended up getting tickets on the 10:00 tour, and about 5 minutes before the tour was scheduled to start, it stopped raining. I’m not sure if anyone heard about the heat wave they’d been having up there – temps over 100, etc. Well, while it was raining, it wasn’t bad, but once it stopped, and the sun came out, it was HOT, and HUMID. We weren’t far into the Fenway tour before my hair had to go up into a ponytail. We learned some interesting facts about Fenway, and I was surprised at how small it is!

After the Fenway tour, we headed back into town, and grabbed a quick lunch before starting our journey down the Freedom Trail. We walked from the start to the finish – 2.5 miles! We didn’t go IN many of the places along the tour, other than a cemetery where John Hancock, Paul Revere, and Samuel Adams are buried, as well as the Old North Church. We did make it all the way to Bunker Hill, but by the time we got there, we were so hot & sweaty that we opted to not climb it. We then walked about halfway back down the Freedom Trail to the North End, where Boston’s Little Italy area is located. We found a little place off the main road that had a special – 2 entrees and a bottle of wine for $29.99. SOLD! After dinner we went to Mike’s Pastry  and got some gelato for dessert. If you have never had gelato, you must try it – amazing! I’d had it before when I went to Italy, and I would imagine that the people making it in the Boston North End probably know how to make it right. From there we found the closest T station and went back to our hotel and pretty much crashed.

(inside the Old North Church)

On Sunday morning we didn’t have too much time before we had to head to the airport, but we had enough time to take the T out to Harvard. We walked around part of campus for a little bit – it reminded me of UGA’s North Campus area. It was very pretty, and I felt smarter just being there! HA! We had a great time in Boston – it wasn’t all that relaxing, but we got to see a lot of things. The only thing that kind of sucked was our hotel room.  The hotel was very nice, and our room was the last one down the hall, which we assumed meant that it would be quiet. What we did not count on was that 2 of the nearby rooms were occupied by a group of guys who appeared to either be on a bachelor party or guy’s weekend. We didn’t really even know they were there until Friday night/Saturday morning around 2:30am. We heard all kinds of noise in the hall, and it went on for a while. Saturday when we were coming back after dinner, we happened to be following them down the hall, and saw how close they were to us. It happened again that night, so Josh called the front desk & they sent security up to quiet them down. It was kind of a bummer to have that happen, but not enough to ruin the trip. We had a great time in Boston!