Thursday, June 02, 2005

Vacation in Boston!

Memorial Day weekend is the traditional start of the summer vacation season. Sometimes it's nice to evaluate your current surroundings and "go on vacation" where you live. This works especially well if you'd prefer to be elsewhere, but can't afford to.
Boston is actually a popular tourist destination and with my sister in town for the long weekend, we decided to hit a couple historical hot spots.

Stop 1: Mike's Pastry in the North End for cannoli and cappucino.
Overheard conversation regarding Red Sox hero Johnny Damon by two authentic North End Italian American locals

Stop 2: Haymarket. Tons of cheap produce...but with the caveat that what they put into your bag might be different than what you would pick out (ie moldy hot peppers).
Overheard "conversation" between vendors calling each other "jerk".

Stop 3: Walden Pond. Due to the close proximity of other pond bathers, the quiet and solitude achieved by Thoreau is hardly reached.
Overheard conversation between two college students:

"There was a girl in one of my classes who was actually going to write about how following The String Cheese Incident is actually a religion! I'm so tired of these hippies!"

Also, school of large, ornamental koi spotted in pond. Koi were followed by canoers, as well as an intrepid wildlife photographer who ran past us and into the woods to get a land shot of the fish. College girls offered themseleves as photo subjects.

Stop 4: Mt. Auburn Cemetery. A scenic drive through America's oldest garden cemetery resulted in an abrubt stop by driver, G, when a medium sized animal loped across the street, and over a hill. G exclaimed, "What was that?!" Liz replied, "I think it's a marmot." G jumped out of the car, saying, "I'm going to get that dog!" and proceeded around the bend in search of the oversized rodent.

The long weekend brought the first nice and seasonable weather in weeks, if not months. We upped the vacation factor by making a fiesta with fresh salsa, margaritas, lanterns and candles and the newly cleaned back deck.

The next day was spent shopping in downtown crossing and memorializing the day with photo booth snapshots.

By the end, the vacation home away from home was well spent, with a true Memorial Day barbeque to mark the beginning of summer.

1 comment:

rashmi said...

I don't know, Miz A...starting to sound like a townie with the "vacation in Boston" bit. Not that it doesn't sound wonderful...(and because I was on day 2 which was a joy). If you start telling us Worcester is the midwest, though, we'll have some problems. Big problems. :P
Love, rashmi