Boston - walking tour of the North End

October 2009. Boston.

OK, this should be my last entry about the Boston trip, barring some major thing that I realize later that I completely forgot to talk about. (Yeah, I know, I haven't talked about the concert itself, but I don't have much to say. It was awesome, and the meet-and-greet was especially fun. And besides, someone else does great write-ups about Rockapella concerts, so there's no need for me to do one.)


So the day after the concert, we decided to do a little sightseeing around Boston. Our hotel wasn't too far from a subway station, so we made our way over there and took the necessary trains to our destination. Well, as it turned out, we ended up taking a couple of trains. We only had like 4 stops to the station we needed to get off at. We took a train, but it turned out that it was only going to two more stations before being taken off, so we got off 2 stations away from where we needed to be. Then we got on another train, but THAT train was only going to the next station before being taken off, so we got off 1 station away from where we needed to be. And we waited for the next train. And the next train came by and dropped off its passengers because it was the last stop for that train. Great, we were APPARENTLY stuck at the station where trains go to die. We were at that station for maybe 10 minutes or so before a train came by that would actually take us to the next station, so we got on it. We had to take 3 trains to go 4 stops. Ugh.

We had finally arrived at our destination - the North End. We wandered a bit on the way, but our first stop was at the Old North Church.

Appropriately, there was a large statue of Paul Revere at the courtyard entrance to the grounds of the Old North Church.



Statue of Paul Revere. The church itself is barely visible against the background of the sky.


In the courtyard, there were various informational things about Paul Revere and the other players in the whole "one if by land, two if by sea" saga.

And then, it was onto the grounds of the Old North Church.



Gate onto Old North Church grounds.


The church itself is pretty amazing. It's beautiful, but it's also pretty awe-inspiring to think about the history of the place.



Inside the Old North Church.


There was a guy inside who gave a little talk about the history of the church, and he invited us to take seats inside the pews. They were actually boxes, which was pretty cool.



View from inside one of the box pews.


After the talk, we had a chance to walk around the church, though we weren't allowed to go up to the second floor. But the organ looked amazing.



The organ at the Old North Church.


I hadn't known that the church was still operating as a regular church. I think it would be really cool to attend an actual service there. If I find myself in Boston again, it's something I'll definitely try to do at that time.


After spending some time wandering around inside the church, we went to the gift shop next door. I've already written about that particular experience.



We wandered around a bit more and then realized that Paul Revere's house was nearby, so we headed over there.


On the way, we happened to pass a group of people on Segways. I have no idea why they were on them, but they caught my attention because the husband and I took a Segway tour of part of Epcot when we were at Walt Disney World a couple years ago, and I *loved* the Segway.







There was a fee to go inside Paul Revere's house and the yard area, and we didn't really have a lot of time, so we decided not to do that.



The front of Paul Revere's house.


We decided to stop for brunch at that point. Afterward, we then wandered over to Faneuil Hall marketplace.



There were a line of carriages available for rides. I thought this one was particularly pretty. It reminded me of a lovely horse and carriage ride that the husband and I took through Central Park a couple years ago.


We then went inside the Great Hall.



Inside the Great Hall at Faneuil Hall.



We walked by Sam's Cafe and Cheers.


We walked around some more, and then we ended up at the harbor, and we looked around there.



Doesn't this woman have a nice backpack?



This was on the harbor. I have no idea why. It was just funny.


It was then time to head back to the hotel. We ended up having a difficult time finding a subway station, so we wandered around a bit more than we had planned in search of one, but we eventually located one and didn't run into the same train problems we'd encountered early that morning. Then, it was off to the airport to wait for our flight back to Los Angeles.

Radisson Boston - hotel review

October. Boston.


OK, you know the setting. My friend and I were trying to figure out where to stay in Boston. I'd never been before and so knew nothing about the city. I thought it might be nice to stay close to the Berklee Performance Center since we were going to see a show there. Well, it turns out that since it was kinda close to Fenway Park in the middle of the Boston Red Sox's pennant run, rooms were a bit difficult to find and fairly expensive to boot. We'd be sharing the room, so that halved the cost, but that didn't mean we wanted to pay the price of one regular room for just our share of the room.

We found a hotel that we thought might suit our needs, but then my friend ended up getting a really good deal at the Radisson Hotel Boston because of her membership.

The hotel has a parking structure, though the spaces themselves and the layout of the multi-floored structure were a bit odd. We arrived about mid-afternoon and drove around a bit before finding a space. There's an elevator in the structure that takes you down to the main floor, and then you have to enter other doors to get into the lobby of the hotel. At one point during our stay, when it was a bit later at night, we discovered that the doors from the parking elevator to the lobby were closed, so we had to go around to the valet parking entrance to get inside the lobby.

And there are stairs everywhere - coming in from the parking elevator, there's a couple steps down to get to the elevator area for the hotel itself, and then a few more steps to get to the main lobby area and then yet more steps to get to the reservation desks. Being from California where wheelchair accessibility is fairly common, it was a bit odd to encounter so many steps (which we noticed because we were pulling our rolling luggage) as that would not be wheelchair friendly at all, but then Boston is a much older city, and I expect this hotel has been around for a while.

The room itself was very nice, with two beds - I can't remember if they were doubles or queens. There was a little balcony area outside the room that we peeked at.



The view from the balcony. No, I have no idea what the view is of.



The view looking in a different direction. I'm not sure that the water from the harbor is readily visible in this picture. You could tell when looking out the window.


The room was clean and comfortable and suitable for our needs. The showerhead in the bathroom was extremely high up, so it was pretty much raining on me when I took a shower, but I find that a lot of hotels are set up that way. Too bad for us short people who don't prefer to be rained on.


The hotel ended up being fairly conveniently situated. We had a lovely dinner at Rustic Kitchen, which is pretty much right next door, across the covered driveway, and the hotel site even refers to Rustic Kitchen as on-site dining. Then just a couple blocks away, there's the lovely Finale. And the nearest subway entrance is only a couple blocks away as well, so that's convenient for travelling around Boston. We ended up taking a cab to Berklee, and that worked out just fine.

I will admit that I have no idea what the regular pricing is on the room, but I definitely would consider staying at the Radisson again on a future visit.

Thanks to Sherry for letting me share her room with her.




Radisson Hotel Boston
200 Stuart Street
Boston, MA 02116
1-800-395-7046
(617) 482-1800

Vinoteca di Monica - restaurant review

On the Sunday of our trip to Boston last month, my friend and I wandered around the North End doing some sightseeing. We also looked for a place to have breakfast/brunch, but we were sort of wanting just regular food. Well, it turned out that our sightseeing was in a neighborhood where there were 400 Italian restaurants per square inch. We weren't really feeling like having Italian food because 1) most of the restaurants were serving regular Italian dishes like pizza and pasta and other heavy lunch/dinner foods as opposed to lighter breakfast/brunch foods and 2) we'd just had Italian for dinner the night before.

We did more sightseeing, and eventually, we just got too hungry to wait for a "regular" restaurant, so we started seriously looking at the Italian restaurants that were in abundant supply. We saw this one little restaurant with open windows, and when we glanced at the menu, behold, there were regular brunch items at this little Italian restaurant!

So, we stopped and had brunch at Vinoteca di Monica. The restaurant was pretty empty at the time - I can't remember if we were the only diners, but if not, there was only one other table occupied. We chose a table right by the open windows which looked out onto the little street. It was a beautiful Boston day.





I decided to just have a really regular breakfast and opted for two eggs with roasted potatoes, rustic toast and bacon. I also decided to add a side of fruit for good measure.

When the dish was brought, I was pleasantly surprised at how generous the serving of bacon was. Usually, it's two thin little pieces of bacon, but not so in this case. Everything was yummy.





When my friend was perusing the menu, she was having a hard time deciding between two items, the French toast and the bruschetta (grilled rustic bread) with eggs, cheese and prosciutto. Our server was *very* Italian, accent and everything, which I rather liked, and when he came to take our order, she asked him which of the two he would recommend. His suggestion was to have the bruschetta, so she went with that. After he left, I told her that he was Italian, so of course he was going to talk her out of having FRENCH toast. ;)

When her dish arrived, it looked really good, and she seemed to enjoy it.





One thing we found curious and amusing is that my dish came with "rustic toast" and hers came with "rustic bread". We wondered what "rustic" was supposed to mean and what the deal was with the bread being rustic.

Well, a search of the net didn't turn up too many things, but I found this description on wisegeek.com that helps a bit. I also found this particular discussion on chowhound which was pretty interesting.


We had a nice little quiet brunch, and everything was pretty tasty. It was a nice respite after our morning of running around and sightseeing. The restaurant looked to be pretty small, so I can imagine that it could be very busy, but it's a place I'd definitely be interested in trying again.




Vinoteca di Monica
143 Richmond St.
Boston, MA 02109
(617) 227-0311

I was just sitting there

So, yeah, I was in Boston early last month.

A friend who'd gotten there the day before to have another adventure came and picked me up at the airport. There was a toll booth on the way from the airport to our hotel, so she stopped and was paying the posted toll fee.

I was sitting in the passenger seat probably checking Twitter or my email on my phone, and it took me a second to register that the toll booth attendant was talking ... and that the talking was directed at ME.

It was one of those where I wasn't paying attention, so I wasn't listening to what he was saying, until something registered, and then I played back in my mind what I'd heard him say.

"Genesis", he'd huffed.

I remembered that I was wearing a Genesis t-shirt from their last concert tour. And I knew that my friend wasn't wearing a Genesis t-shirt, even though I didn't notice that she was wearing a Rockapella t-shirt, though I really should have just guessed that.

He said he saw Genesis on their last tour and he ragged on them because they didn't play anything from "Abacab". I was really too stunned to say anything at the time. I mean, seriously, I was just sitting there minding my own business. Yeah, ok, I had the t-shirt on, but I guess I don't get a lot of comments so I wasn't really expecting one at that point in time, since I didn't know he could even see me well enough to notice my t-shirt, and I mostly wear the t-shirt because it makes me happy, because I saw them multiple times, and it was an awesome concert each time.


It wasn't until later that I could really process what he'd said.


Now, I like "Abacab", but I wouldn't say there are any major standout signature songs on that album, and Genesis has a whole lot of songs in their arsenal that they could possibly play. They played a REALLY LONG SET, and they even played songs like "Ripples" and "Afterglow" for f'ing sake, two absolutely beautiful songs that normally don't get played. They played a ton of stuff that's not in their usual repertoire, and they played a lot of really old songs, including "The Carpet Crawlers".

But the concert sucked because they didn't play any of the songs from ONE PARTICULAR ALBUM?

And for that, I got hassled for it, because, you know, I had some say in the matter, all while I was doing nothing to provoke it?

W

one if by land, two if by tea

When I was in Boston a couple of weeks ago, I had a chance to visit Christ Church in the City of Boston, probably better known as The Old North Church, where the events of April 18, 1775 would make the history books.

After spending some time inside the church, it was time to visit the gift shop. They had some really cute things in there, including a little church mouse. I looked at it a few times but finally convinced myself that I didn't need to buy it.


But he is very cute.



And as I looked around the store a bit more, the friend I was with called me over to where she was looking at things - the tea section.

Uh oh.

OK, now I have to explain the tea thing - and this is only in reference to hot tea. Iced tea is a whole different, un-drama-filled deal. I like tea. I like tea a lot. I REALLY like tea. I don't know that I'd go so far as to say that I *love* tea, but I'm as close to that as possible without necessarily actually saying that. But, I don't like all teas. My preferences in tea are pretty simple, and they mostly tend to be the English-made teas. I don't generally do fru-fru fruity teas. I like the dark bold teas, straight up - no lemon, no milk, no sugar (except when I'm sick, in which case I do take my hot tea with lemon and honey, but that's the only exception). I like jasmine tea, I like green tea, and I really like English Breakfast Tea. OK, maybe with regard to English Breakfast Tea, I can say that I love tea. It's got rich flavor and doesn't just taste like slightly flavored hot water. And I love it enough that I've bought English Breakfast Tea made by multiple tea producers. And that's where the husband's objection comes in. It's not that he objects to tea in general or my purchase of tea. His objection seems to be that I buy multiple quantities of the one tea when I've already got quantities of the same tea made by other companies.

Now, understand that while I do like tea, having hot tea in warm weather isn't really my thing, and living where I do, we have warm weather a lot. Having hot tea on a cold day/night is very nice, but we don't get a lot of those. Hot tea is also quite time consuming, because I have to keep adding water to my cup, so it's not like I can just sit with a cup of hot tea for hours. It requires getting up and pouring more hot water in on a regular basis. Much less convenient than, say, a bottle of water or a can of soda. So, no, I don't drink as much hot tea as I might other beverages, and tea boxes often come with 16 or 20 tea bags. That's a lot of tea to drink. But, I see that tea is available somewhere, and I want to look, and I pretty much want English Breakfast Tea. So, I have purchased multiple varieties of that particular kind of tea, but if the husband is around, I often don't end up buying tea.

When he's not there, though, that's another matter.


So one of the teas they had in the store was Boston Harbour Tea - it's even got the British spelling of "Harbour"! This was the same brand of tea that was dumped in Boston Harbour during the infamous Boston Tea Party. Well, now that's exciting. I was amused that it was actually advertised as being the Boston Tea Party dumped tea. And, it's a blend of Darjeeling, Indian and Ceylon teas, so that sounded really good. So I had to buy a box of that.


The story of the history of the tea is on one of the side panels of the box.



Slight derail to tell this story: I was at the cash register paying for my purchases, and my friend was looking at something else, so I was explaining to her that this tea was the same tea that was dumped in Boston Harbour. This elicited a response from the cashier that no, it wasn't the same tea, it was just made by the same manufacturer. OK, seriously, I didn't mean that the contents of the box of tea I was buying was the ACTUAL tea that was tossed in the Harbour oh those many years ago and that they had APPARENTLY gathered all the tea dumped overboard and had been selling them piecemeal for the 200+ years since the incident occurred. And no, the cashier was not kidding in correcting me. W.


So, ok, one box of tea. Well, I didn't just buy that one box of tea. They had another tea in the store that was in a souvenir container with a picture of the Old North Church on it. How cool is that? And, I found it highly ironic that the tea inside the souvenir container with a picture of the Old North Church, where events had taken place to thwart the British invading force, was English Breakfast Tea. It wouldn't have been as funny if it was Darjeeling or even Earl Grey, but English Breakfast Tea? Someone has a wicked sense of humour. (Yes, I use the British spelling of that word too.) So, I had to buy the tea. The English Breakfast Tea. The kind that I really like. The kind that I already had a lot of.


This either shows that the English and the Americans have made up after that particular incident, or it's the Colonies sticking it to the British yet again, rubbing in their defeat.



And yes, before I actually made my purchase of the teas, I actually thought about it and considered that the husband wouldn't be too happy with me buying more tea. At least with the Boston Harbour tea, it was a different kind of tea, so he might have been ok with that even if he was there, but notwithstanding the nifty souvenir container with the picture of the Old North Church, it was that EBT again. The friend I was with said that really, there was no need for the husband to even find out about the teas. They would fit nicely inside my luggage, and it wasn't like the husband was going to go through my luggage when I got home, and all I had to do was take the teas to work the next day (I bought the teas on a Sunday afternoon when we'd be flying back to Los Angeles that night) and leave them there, and he'd never be the wiser. But I figured, if I bought the teas, what was he going to do? It's not like he could make me return them - the teas were purchased from the other side of the country, not just in the neighborhood and easily returnable. He wasn't going to throw my teas away. He wasn't going to ground me or take away my television or computer privileges. And I really wanted the teas. So I bought them.


And, when I got home that night, the husband was still awake, and I told him a bit about my trip. And I confessed to buying the teas. And I explained to him how cool each tea was. He just laughed at me when I told him that the nifty souvenir container had EBT inside it. I mean, he knows I like the stuff, so it couldn't have been that much of a shock that I bought more, right? And he couldn't have been too disapproving, since he did agree to take the pictures of the teas that I've used in this entry.

I haven't tried either tea yet, but I will indeed now be bringing them to work so that I can have them there.

:)

Finale Desserterie - restaurant review

After the lovely dinner at Rustic Kitchen that I previously wrote about, the three of us headed to our concert, and then after we were done, we came back to the hotel. We were looking for somewhere to have dessert since we weren't ready for the evening to be over, but it turned out that Rustic Kitchen wasn't open as late as we'd hoped. We spoke to the doorman at the hotel and asked if there was somewhere nearby where we could go for dessert and coffee or drinks, and he mentioned that Finale was only a couple of blocks away, so we walked over.

I have to say that this has been one of the best recommendations I've ever gotten. Finale is a pretty small place, and when we got there at shortly before 11pm, there was about a 20 minute wait before a table opened up for us.

The dessert menu was tempting indeed, and we all perused the choices to decide what to have. In the end, we decided to just share a few desserts so that we could get tastes of different things.

First, we decided on the Retro Chocolate Plate because it had a nice mix of different items that sounded good to us. And, because we were in Boston, we also decided to share a dish of Boston Cream Pie.

One of my companions had the same affinity for moscato that I do, so we each decided to try a glass of the sparkling moscato with our dessert as well.


[Side note: apologies for the quality of the pictures. My phone doesn't do well taking pictures in low light, so I just lightened the photos enough to see the details, but that doesn't solve the focus or graininess issues.]


I had never had Boston Cream Pie before, and I discovered that I *really* like it. My companions informed me that this version was different than normal Boston Cream Pie, so now I guess I'll just have to try it in various places to see what it's like. I really liked the taste and the texture. I also really liked that the plate came with some fresh fruit - I think I ended up eating the majority of the fruit. The chocolate whoopie pie (the trio of cookie-like things) was ok, but I found it to be a lot sweeter than I prefer. When our server had told us about the whoopie pie, we all just stared at him, and he said we must all not be local because it's a regional thing, and then he explained what they were.







The Retro Chocolate Plate was a terrific choice. I think what we got varied a bit from what's listed on the site's menu from August, but we really enjoyed everything. The two favorites were the molten chocolate cake and the milk chocolate banana pyramid.







The sparkling moscato was also really tasty.


We had a lovely time at Finale, and it's a place I'd definitely go back to and highly recommend to others.




Finale Desserterie - Park Plaza
One Columbus Avenue
Boston, MA 02116
(617) 423-3184

Rustic Kitchen - restaurant review

A friend and I were in Boston last weekend, and we were looking for somewhere to have dinner for the night we were there. We hadn't made dinner plans ahead of time as we'd just decided to wing it. We later discovered that on the way to our hotel, both she and I had noticed a particular restaurant on the way, though she was the one that remembered enough of the restaurant name for me to be able to look it up and find it. It also turned out that the restaurant, Rustic Kitchen, was right next door, almost adjacent, to the hotel we were staying at, so that was very convenient, and a perusal of the menu satisfied us both. We were going to be joined by a new friend for dinner, so I called the restaurant at about 4:30pm, and I made a reservation for 6pm.

We walked across the covered valet area to the restaurant and discovered a rather circuitous route to the hostess desk. The main entrance of the restaurant was actually off the street, so we'd really gone in through the side door. There were signs directing us through part of the restaurant to get to the hostess desk, and when we checked in, we discovered our dinner companion had already arrived and had been given a table, though she had made a visit to the ladies room, so we were led to the table as well, where she joined us shortly thereafter.

We perused the menu and there were a number of items that sounded really good, but all of that went out the door for me at least when the server came up and told us about the daily specials. I ended up ordering off the daily specials choices. The special soup for the evening was Boston clam chowder with smoked pancetta. Well, I was in Boston - why not some Boston clam chowder, and the addition of the pancetta sounded even better. All three of us ended up starting with the chowder. I then ordered the swordfish with lobster mashed potatoes and broccolini while my companions each ordered an entree salad.

Bread was also brought to our table, and it was accompanied by some kind of hummus as a dip (which was delicious) as well as Italian olives, which I loved.

We chatted a bit, and then our chowder arrived. It was actually a much more generous serving than I had expected, and it was absolutely delicious. I love having clam chowder that actually has clams as a main ingredient and not simply as an afterthought. It also wasn't very heavy on potatoes, which I like. I like potato chowder too, but I don't like it when potato chowder masquerades as clam chowder.


Boston clam chowder with smoked pancetta. I thought it was amusing that they served it with chopsticks.
(No, they're not really chopsticks, just breadsticks. But I thought it was funny.)


After enjoying our chowder, we had more time for good conversation before our entrees arrive. This time, I decided to spare my dinner companions the inconvenience of photographing their food, but they both enjoyed their salads very much. I also really enjoyed my swordfish. It had a nice texture and flavor and was very moist and tender and flavorful. The mashed potatoes were good, though I didn't finish them because the portion size was pretty generous, and I loved having the broccolini, which I'm partial to anyway, but again, it was a generous portion of vegetable on the dish.


Swordfish with lobster mashed potatoes and broccolini.


With my dinner, I had also decided to enjoy an adult beverage. I can't tell you what it tasted like in comparison to other drinks, but I can tell you that it was pretty yummy.


"Tastes like summer" is the name of this drink.


It wasn't particularly crowded when we had arrived, but that was probably earlier than most people normally have dinner. As our evening progressed, the dining room did get full.

We didn't end up having dessert at the restaurant partly because we were already full but mostly because we were headed to a show and needed to leave at a certain time.

Overall, we had a terrific meal, and the room was very nice and had great atmosphere, and our server was very good as well. He was attentive and available when we needed something, but he wasn't obtrusive as to interrupt our conversation. If I have the opportunity, I'd certainly go back, and I'd definitely recommend it to others.

Parking can be a bit tricky in that part of town since there's not much parking available, but there's a lot that serves both the nearby Radisson Hotel as well as Rustic Kitchen.




Rustic Kitchen
Boston at Park Square
210 Stuart Street
Boston, MA 02116-5426
(617) 423-5700