Thursday, August 6 -- Today on a lawn chair in Cape Cod reading about the city of Venice, I came to the realization that I did not want my travels to end. My friend, Chris, and I had arrived in Boston the previous Saturday and in a week’s time I felt like I had lived for a month or more. We met new people, saw great friends, ate food from all around the world and experienced the day-to-day life that only a traveler in a new place can come to understand.
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After work on Friday, I left for St. Paul to meet Chris and stay with his sister and her husband, a former student of my dad’s. I dropped off my stuff and then we called up another friend to grab some drinks in St. Paul. After talking to a few girls at a bar on Grand, we called it a night just before midnight since we had a 3:45 am wake-up call the next day – wouldn’t have minded talking to one of the girls even if she was an Iowa State grad.
Saturday morning came early but I was so excited for the trip that I jumped off the couch and we were on our way. Seeing the city of Boston as we flew into Logan Airport was very exciting. It was a beautiful Saturday morning in Boston and a plethora of sailboats glided through the harbors propelled by the winds of a warm summer day.
We checked our bags at the Millennium Hotel and headed out on the town for a while. An incredible fruit market was on the street next to our hotel and we bought two cartons of raspberries for a total of $1. We walked through Quincy Market and Fanneuil Hall. And then decided to make our way to the Samuel Adams brewery.
A quick public transit ride later and we arrived at the closest stop to the brewery. We were lucky enough to get tickets for a 1:40 p.m. tour and ran off to grab a quick lunch before our tour began.
After an awesome lunch on an outdoor patio, we got back to the brewery and began our tour. Hillary, our tour guide, was pretty, informative and quite funny. After tasting the barley and wheat, and smelling the hops that goes into Sam Adams, we checked out the brewery room and then headed to the best room of all – the tasting room.
We got our complimentary 7 oz. tasting glasses and were then given 3 beers to sample – Summer Ale, Boston Lager and Brick Red. The Brick Red was an exclusive beer to the Boston area and was only being kegged for about 100 bars in the Boston area before it will likely be discontinued.
We left the brewery after our beers and went to the hotel to check in. Fitz had the great idea of getting tickets for an Improv Asylum show ($15) and we had a late sushi snack in Quincy Market.
Saturday night we went to the Improv Asylum show and it was awesome. We met Laura in line for our beers and she jokingly asked us if we could be her friends from “Iowa or something” so she could get more than the maximum of two beers per person. She was from Florida and had no clue we were from Iowa but turns out she made a good guess! We bought a bunch of Sam Adams Lights and went to enjoy the show.
The improv group was really good and the small, underground theater was filled with bachelorette parties who were all having a great time. My favorite line of the night was: “TV might be a cheap date, but you can’t finger Tivo!” Classic.
After the Improv show, we walked Hanover Street which is basically Boston’s Little Italy. We had gelato and Fitz grabbed a meatball sub and then we went to hit up the pubs of Boston.
The first pub was actually a restaurant called Ye Old Oyster House – and it happens to be the oldest restaurant in America. Bill Clinton, George HW Bush, Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky and many others have dined there. So Fitz and I felt cool having some Brick Reds at the pub.
Oyster House was chill and we heard some live music coming from down the street so we decided to check out The Point. Good decision Fitz!
The band there was awesome and it was a good group of people in the pub. The band played everything from U2 and Kings of Leon to the Beastie Boys and Green Day. Truly matched my taste in music. Danced with some girls from Boston and stumbled home at 1 am or so after I grabbed a sausage with onions at a stand on the way back to the hotel.
Oh yeah, did I mention that the Millennium is a four-star hotel and our room was sweet!
Anyway, we got up on Sunday morning and felt surprisingly good. Our plan was to go for a long run through Boston and we got going just after 9 am.
We ran to the following places during our 12 mile run: Boston Commons, the Duck Pond, Commonwealth Ave., Fenway Park, Prudential Tower, John Hancock Towers, a really cool church, the entire Freedom trail which included the Old State House, Sam Adams’ grave, the Old North Church, Paul Revere’s house and Bunker Hill.
Bunker Hill came at about 11.5 miles into our run and we decided to walk the 294 steps to the top of the monument. My calf muscles were on fire when we finally got to the top.
After a bit of a cool down finish, we ended up walking when we got back to Little Italy and stopped in at Mike’s Pastry shop. We had cannolis, and bought lobstertail pastries and Boston cream pie for later!
A quick shower and then we went to Wagamama’s for lunch. It was great – fried squid with chili sauce, seafood ramen noodles (not that shit ramen you’re probably thinking of!), cocunut ice cream with mango sauce and a Japanese beer.
At Wagamama’s our buddy Dave Keller called – he’s living in Springfield, Mass. – and let us know that he had got into town to meet us. We met up with Dave and went back to the Point for some Sam Adams. We each bought a round, we watched the Red Sox and we caught up. By the end of the afternoon, we were laughing our asses off.
We grabbed oysters and clams at Ye Old Oyster House – along with, you guessed it, more Sam Adams.
We then headed over to Little Italy to find some cigars and ended up being lured into a wine shop by Keller. Turns out that Keller knows his wine and we headed back to the hotel (or so we thought) with two bottles of red wine and a corkscrew. On the way back to the hotel, Keller decides that he needs an espresso martini and he needs it made a certain way. We end up finding an adequate bar on our third attempt and sit down for some beers, Keller for his martini and shots for all. The cute bartender who is originally from Oklahoma entertained us for quite a while before we got ready to leave. On our way out we walked by a group of girls with strong British accents and we struck up a conversation.
Avril, Ally, Claire and Dora turned out to be very interesting and friendly young ladies who we had a great time with. We drank with them for quite a while, went to the hotel with them for a bottle of red and then went back out to the bars for some more drinks. It was a pleasure to meet them and I had an awesome time talking to girls who actually know who Keane, The Kooks and The Kaiser Chiefs are. I may have even found a traveling companion for my hopefully upcoming excursion to Barcelona.
With a wicked awesome weekend in the books, we got ready to head to Cape Cod on Monday morning and Keller took us to the bus station at about 10 am. Getting on the bus that morning, my mind raced with memories of the weekend which had just passed.
So many days in our lives are filled with routine that when we travel and get thrown out of that routine, we truly feel alive. My mind was all a blur as we took our bus seats. The days on the Cape were going to be different than our two days in Boston. The Cape would be more relaxing, slower placed and understandably less eventful. I’ll admit that I was not ready to leave Boston. However, going to Cape Cod in early August is hardly something to complain about.
My mind racing and partially feeling the pain of a two-day Sam Adams binge…I fell asleep with the Monday New York Times in my lap. Next stop, Cape Cod.
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