June 2023: Family Vacation—Boston
Saturday: We left Minneapolis early in the morning and headed to Boston. This was our first time in Boston as a family and we were all excited to see the city. After an uneventful flight (that’s how we like it) we landed in Boston. We meet up with the other half of our party, Alexandra, Cory, and Olivia at the airport and proceeded to order an Uber. We figured an Uber XL would suffice…. What we learned is that you cannot comfortably fit 6 people and luggage into a Toyota Highlander. “Well, let’s make this work” we said and we all crammed in. We were on our way to the AirBnB in Somerville. I was excited to see the city skyline but guess what, we took tunnels most of the way to the suburb, couldn’t see a thing. I’m a surface dweller, can we please take roads above the ground?
We stopped at the house to drop off the luggage and then to headed to Assembly Row to have lunch at the Salt and Stone. Delicious!
Made a quick stop at Trader Joes to pick up some groceries… in the rain. Alas Amy and I pulled out umbrellas and we were all set. We packed ourselves into an Uber, that was too small for our group (when are we going to learn) and made it back to the AirBnB. Oh no, where’s my phone? It’s driving away in the Uber. Oh shit! Thankfully after a short time of repeatedly calling the phone the Uber Drive answered it. He was wonderful and delivered the phone back to us about an hour later. Whew – crisis averted.
The plan for tonight was dinner at Giacomo’s in Little Italy. Oh my gosh how fun, Little Italy was very busy,
people everywhere, the line for Giacomo’s was half way down the block. We end up having a very enjoyable and delicious meal at Florentine Cafe. We never made it to Giacomo’s, which was highly recommended. That will have to be on our list for next time. Anyway, Amy had fettuccine Positano which reminded her of being in Italy and I had the lamb chops, amazing. We headed back to our AirBnB after an eventful first day.
Sunday: We got up early and made our way to our first adventure of the day…the Underground Donut Tour where we met our guides Grace and Vlad. We started at Kane Donuts in the financial district where we sampled a honey glazed donut. Donuts are love is the saying. Fun fact: there are 2480 donut shops in Boston. It seems that they love their donuts here. Another fun fact: we learned that the donut was invented in Boston by Hanson Gregory, an American, is claimed to have invented the ring-shaped doughnut in 1847 aboard a lime-trading ship. Who knew? Our tour took us on part of the Harbor (Hawba) walk, a near-continuous, 43-mile linear park along Boston’s shoreline, the Harbor walk connects Boston’s waterfront neighborhoods to Boston Harbor and each other. We had delicious blueberry cake donuts while looking at the beautiful yachts in the harbor.
The next attraction on our walk was Quincy Market and Faneuil Square on our way to Boston Market for hibiscus/raspberry donuts and maple/bacon donuts. Last stop on our donut tour was Bova’s, the oldest bakery in Little Italy, which opened it doors in 1926. We had the best Boston cream cake donut ever! After a long walking tour our feet were tired so we headed for the Samual Adams tap house for a well deserved sit and some brews. “Have a cold Sam Adams while looking at a cold Sam Adams” is the saying
here because Sam Adams is buried near by. Hung out around Faneuil hall and Quincy Market then had a quick bite of clam chowda and a lobster roll at the Salty Dog. Walked through Quincy market and were surprised that the entire place was food vendors. Looked amazing! We also learned how to say Bawhston.
Then on to the Samual Adams brewery for a tour and tasting. More beer! The tour was fascinating and we tasted some great beers. This was the original brewing location but now this facility is used for R&D and creating new flavors for only the locals and tours. Amy didn’t actually care for the beers so bonus for me I got to drink double the amount. My favorite beer was the chocolate chilly dark beer. It was amazing! After that we were all exhausted and headed back for a rest. We decided to stay in and door dash some highly recommended Regina Pizza to the house. The pizza was amazing with very large ingredients and tasted fantastic. Wow, what big day of fun we had!
Monday: Today we decided to take things a little slower. We started with a self guide tour of the freedom trail. It starts at the visitor center in the Boston Commons. Slower? What the heck were we thinking as we we set out for 2.5 mile walk through the city. Learned lots of interesting history along the way. The nice thing about this self guide tour is that we had the time to stop for a lobster roll and a pint at the Sam Adams tap house. We saw the grave stones and listened to a little history on John Hancock, Paul Revere, and Samual Adams. Really pretty fascinating, we probably learned more American history on this tour than we did in all of high school. Wow… 2.5 miles feels like a very long way. Amy and I had to stop for rest a few times. The last stop on our tour was the USS Constitution. The oldest floating war ship in America. However we didn’t get to tour the ship because on Monday’s it is closed. Again, we now know for next time. Oh well, our feet probably couldn’t take it anyway.
Back to the house for a much needed rest, then we went to Legal Seas on the Mystic for a seafood dinner. We were all pretty tired. But we couldn’t leave Boston without trying a cannoli. Thankfully a Mike’s Pastries was right around the corner. Wow, the best cannolis we ever had. Definitely worth the stop!!
Tuesday: Started the day with a tour of the historical Fenway stadium. A bit of advice, if you get dropped off for a tour, go to the right. Tour leaves from Gate D. We mistakenly went to the left and ended up walking around the entire outside of the stadium. Oops, needless to say our feet were not happy. Besides that little mishap the ball park has some interesting history. It was a really fun tour. It seemed like every seat had a great vantage point for seeing the game. We were surprised at how small the park actually is. Of course they threw lots of facts at us an told us about the different owners over the years. The most fascinating fun fact we learned was why the green monster was installed. It is a 37’2″ high wall off of left field. It was built because there was a car dealership on that side of the stadium and the players would hit their balls out of the park and break the windshields.
Next we were off to explore the historic Boston Public Library, very impressive building. We enjoyed the architecture and the quiet. The Boston Tea Party Museum was next on our agenda. It’s a very theatrical performance with highly encouraged participation. Again that was a lot of history about how America came to be. The girls got to act out throwing tea in harbor and of corse Amy took some pictures in the museum that we told not to take. She is such rule breaker.
So now we are all ready to eat somewhere (maybe a little past ready for some of us) and we picked a restaurant called Gather in the Seaport District. We walked a few short blocks to get there, sorry feet more walking. It was really nice and the food was quite good. A few of us tried raw oysters on the half shell for the first time. Everyone liked them. The Seaport district was really a nice area with shops, restaurants, and of course part of the harbor.
We are at the end of our trip and it has been a great vacation, we got to learn some history, explored an exciting new city, and ate some amazing seafood. We all thought Boston was Wicked Smaaht. What a fun trip!
Travel tip:
What did we learn on this trip? If staying in an AirBnB stay close to the heart of the action to cut down on the excessive need for Ubers and the constant shuttling back and forth. You may pay more up front but will save at the cost of traveling around by taxi or Uber.
Restaurants the we ate at:
Salt and Stone
Florentine Cafe
Salty Dog
Regina Pizza
Quincy Market
Legal Seas at the Mystic
Mike’s Pastries
Gather
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