boston day three

Remember when we went to Boston for Memorial weekend? Here's what we did on our last day there. So pathetic that it's taken so long to post this and really does anyone care anymore at this point? Time goes so quickly in NY! The end of June was sick since we were diligently searching for a new flat and moving. Then came July with Katie driving across the country with Daddy-O (she's a badass truck driver now and had no problems with a16ft truck) and then getting settled and August had us on vacation and getting back to work.

On our last day in Boston we just HAD to go to the Target behind our hotel since we were in serious withdrawals not having been to one in several months. There is a Target in Park Slope, Brooklyn but it's always picked over and a mess and not fun to go to at all. Shockingly we were in and out of this Target within 20 minutes-just couldn't be bothered in the end it seems. It was then time to check out of our hotel and say goodbye to our fabulous beds and spacious room and head off to our first destination of the day The Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum. In asking people what we should do in Boston this museum was brought up several times as a particular favorite so we thought we'd check it out. It's basically a museum of one woman's art collection set up to her specifications- it was nice, but not entirely our thing. It shouldn't be too surprising to many who know us that we were more interested in the story about the art theft eighteen years ago that occurred there (we love a good mystery). Sadly 13 pieces were stolen in the night and still haven't been recovered.

After the museum we decided to check out the Duck Tours of Boston that our friend Maddy told us we should do. Unfortunately we didn't think about it being so popular and it was totally booked until 5:30 PM and wouldn't finish int time for us to get our bags and catch our bus, so now we have a reason to go back to Boston. Since we now had several hours to do whatever we wanted we decided to check out Beacon Hill and then walk the Freedom Trail and see some historical landmarks and more of Boston by foot.


We found two more cemeteries while on the trail. The most famous was home to a Herbie Hancock... oh wait, make that John Hancock! Heidi did the bit from Tommy Boy and it's been a common joke all summer especially since it seems like his name is everywhere on promo posters in the subways to ads in the newspapers.

The Freedom Trail got to be very annoying near the end of the day since we were getting wound around in crazy patterns when we just wanted the quickest way to a landmark (especially Paul Revere's House). Turns out that not only is The Freedom Trail educational but also a bit of a trap for tourists to buy stuff at various places along the way (we didn't fall for that). While exploring the Freedom Trail we encountered a sign that made Heidi laugh so hard.


How can you not laugh at that sign? Turns out if you Google it a lot of other people find it amusing too.

Once we got to the bus station for our bus back to NY we ended up having to take the 7:30 bus since they overbooked the 7:00 bus and while we waited made some new French friends. It wasn't as nice a trip back as it was coming-for one we were wide awake this time and now we know why we got to Boston so fast. This driver went about 100MPH and tried to kill us before we could get back to NY-he was tailgating anything in his path and would pass anyone like we were a little car and not a charter bus. We luckily made it into NY intact it was nice to be back to what we're used to-lots of people, noise, dirty streets, smelly smells and our little room in Brooklyn.

So that's it for Boston-months later-sorry.

boston-day two

We had a slow start since we were so tired from the day before and didn't even make it out of our room until noon. First on our list of things to do was to hit the Museum of Fine Arts. It's currently under a bit of construction so there were some areas closed off but we still managed to spend 3 hours there. Our absolute favorite exhibit was Antonio Lopez Garcia's. His subjects are mostly common and simple but really powerful in their impact with something so basic as his use of lighting (it's the all those art history papers I wrote coming out isn't it?).


Apparently it can take years for him to complete a painting while he waits for the the light to be the same every time he works on it. He's both a painter and a sculptor and there were these giant baby heads on the lawn of the museum that are quite stunning when you first come up to the museum.



There was also an exhibit of British prints that was in it's final week-so we were lucky to see that and gush over it's loveliness. The prints had such great uses of color and shapes and anything pertaining to Britain makes us happy.



Our one gripe of the museum was the poor placement of the bag check. To get to your bag and go to the gift shop you had to walk through the museum and they MADE us check our purses. We had to go to bag check, get out our wallets and then check our bags again, then go through the museum to the gift shop to check out the books (they were out of the catalog for Antonio Lopez Garcia! but we did get a great photography book on Berlin for $7!) then schlep all the way back to the damn bag check to get our bags again and THEN leave.

After the museum we were starving so we headed to Cambridge to get something to eat and check out that hood. We hit an Urban Outfitters where we got our second cool book for the day (more of them to come) this one is about Swedish graphic designer Olle Eksell and we got it for only$5! It's all in Japanese but it's the graphics we love anyway.

The local vegetarian cafe was having it's annual spoken word festival so they were only doing take away which resulted in us going across the ally to some Mexican joint that turned out to be not that bad. They had a vegetarian empananda with black beans, corn and red pepper sauce that was pretty good for a non-fan of Mexican food (I like it-I just don't LOVE it for all of you gasping in horror over that comment). Our server was very ivy league and a nice guy who looked like the pervy friend from Adventures In Babysitting. We felt so bad for him since he had two large tables and 4 small ones and was constantly going, going, going.

After dinner we just walked around and admired the architecture. There were a few interesting mixes of modern architecture on some streets with all period architecture.




Then we found a cemetery that was open for us to explore. While we were there a woman came in and asked us if we were interested in a mini tour of the place since she gave them. Yes, please! It was very interesting and informative-she knew her stuff and we had a great time with her until it got too dark to really see anymore. Her name is Donna La Rue and she has been a burying ground researcher for years. It doesn't take much for us to get excited over a cool old cemetery and we have been known to visit them whenever we can in our travels (Manchester, Dublin, London, and Paris) We have our eyes on Greenwood in Brooklyn but haven't made it yet.





After we left the cemetery we decided we need some ice cream to finish off our evening, so we wandered around Harvard Square looking for an ice cream shop and happened upon the Harvard Bookstore. We found a few interesting books on sale (just add them to the pile!) plus we received a great recommendation for frozen yogurt from the girl that helped us. We both got grapefruit frozen yogurt that was so yummy-Heidi got chocolate chips on top while I got strawberries. We've never had grapefruit frozen yogurt (sounded a little gross) but it was fantastic! After that, it was getting late, our new books were getting heavy, and everything was closing so we headed back to our hotel and took advantage of our rooms TV and watched a little bit of the Deadliest Catch marathon on the Discovery channel.

boston-day one

For Memorial weekend we both had Saturday through Monday off so we decided to get out of town and go to Boston since we'd never been there and thought it was about time to check it out. We left our flat bright and early Saturday morning at 6am to catch the 7am Fung Wah bus (it's only $15 each way, who can beat that?) Our bus must have had wings because we got to Boston by 10:15 and we weren't really expecting to get there until 11 or 11:30. It was a mega-bonus for us to check into our hotel early and drop of our bags as well. We stayed at a Marriott Courtyard in South Boston and it felt like we were in a palace after being cramped in our tiny room in Brooklyn for the last 3 months. This room was twice the size, had a TV (of course it would-but we don't have one so it was exciting to us) the beds were so BIG and comfy, and it had a lovely bathroom. We were in heaven! Seriously... it was so hard to leave all that space and comfort.

Once renewed and refreshed, we didn't have set plans so we decided to hit one of the museums we wanted to go to while there. We took the silver line on the T (Boston's public transport), it's quite strange. It's a bus that goes underground in a tunnel. The other thing we noticed immediately with Boston's trains/buses is the quiet. There was hardly anyone around and we felt a bit like we were in a film where there is some disease that wipes everyone out and all that's left are zombies. It was like that pretty much all weekend-people got out of town while we came into town. It was nice to get away from constant people, people, people everywhere.

Our first stop was to check out the Institute of Contemporary Art which was small but everything on exhibit was fantastic!!



The New Museum in NY could learn some things from them. The ICA is located right by a bay and there were some sailboats cruising around and a nice breeze. May we just add that the ICA building has a fabbity-fab elevator. Yes, we were smitten with their giant elevator and it's lovely glass and wood. We could have spent a few hours watching the elevator go up and down. After the ICA we walked around the area but there wasn't much else to do unless we wanted to take a ferry somewhere-which we didn't.

We decided to go to Newbury Street since our friend Maddy suggested it and walked for quite awhile around there.


It's a lot of little boutiques/shops and for some reason it reminded us of a high street in any town, England. Hmmm... Throughout the weekend little things would remind us of England which made us a bit sad. Two years ago we were living it up all over England with "The Man" on tour having a great time. We walked and walked and walked and just checked out the various buildings as we usually do when we explore new cities. We eventually came to a large park and walked though it.



While in the park we saw 4 brides and grooms getting their photos taken. It's the season-blech. Of coarse we had to rate the various brides and their dresses-it's what we do. Sidenote-Bostonians are seriously lacking in the fashion department-we saw a lot of horrible outfits/hairstyles and while we aren't the fashion police we are still going to mock your bad outfit. We loved the old architecture of the city and took a lot of pictures of buildings.



We were getting pretty tired after walking all over so we decided to hit a movie since neither of us had been to one one in months. We went to Chronicles of Narnia:Prince Caspian and really liked it a lot-maybe even more than the first one. If you see it-Eddie Izzard is the voice to a mouse and that really made our day since we adore Mr. Izzard and we will be going to see him at Radio City at the end of June. After the film we were so exhausted from our long day we went back to our room and crashed. Really-it was a struggle to even get into our jim jams.

*up next-day two WOOP WOOP!