the best of Boston, MA 2010

disclaimer:
we took a lot of photos in boston.
and this will be my final installment of our vacation.
and i promise...there will be more fun posts to follow.

boston...our final city on our 4 state, 2 week east coast excursion.

we stayed at the hyatt regency ...our "deal of the year" was just awesome.
(yeah for dave and his love for finding a good deal) AND our fabulous hotel had a bellhop named Dave Barry. As we were waiting out front our hotel i leaned over to my dave and said, "do you see his name tag?"
introductions took place...and the bond of the same-name- brotherhood began....every day, when we walked out of the hotel we would hear,
"hey dave barry, where you going?"

Our DB twin hooked us up and comped our breakfast tab!
We ate amazing brunch items, eggs benedict, fresh butter croissants, bowls of strawberries, raspberries and blackberries, homemade granola, OJ in champagne glasses, and we even had our own carafe of coffee at our quiet table for two looking over the river...ahh...thanks to the other DB.
get this, this new Dave Barry friend of ours, is originally from Cork, Ireland just like the Barry family i have married into.
small world, small world. we could all be related.

Boston by far had the best weather the East Coast had to offer during our 2 week visit.


we arrived in boston around 10am, checked into our hotel and took off to catch the 1130am Freedom Trail walking tour.

we had the most amazing, in character, in full colonial attire professional walking tour guide, who played the part of a real life barrel maker from the 1700's.
(whom we later found out was our tour guides great great great uncle!)

the tour only covered the first 1 mile of the trail, so after the tour we finished the Trail ourselves, except we stopped for burgers, beer, mike's pastries (i guess they are famous in boston) farmers market, a street performance and water along the way.
so the 3 mile freedom trail took us a good portion of the afternoon, but so worth it!



we toured paul reverer's home, we saw the uss constitution, we received a private tour of the uss cassin young (an active destroyer hanging out in the port), we saw the tomb stones of sam adams, paul reverer, the ben franklin family, and many many others.





we ate at the green dragon tavern.


and then there is mike's pastrys.
just look at the line for their famous canolli's.

(i am so thankful my store doesn't have traffic like that...ohmy!)
but we had to go because its the local attraction, everyone had a mike's white box.


our second day in boston was spent taking a walking tour of hahvahd.
aka harvard.
bostonians don't pronounce their "r"s so it sounds like it is written above.
dave won a pop quiz on our tour, free tickets to another tour of boston.
the question was, "how many current supreme court justice's are graduates of harvard?"

he is a smart little cookie. we know.
harvard had a beautiful campus and we had some pretty entertaining student tour guides.
we learned that there are 6000 undergraduates in attendance at harvard.
and 100% of them receive some kind of financial aid to attend.
if you come from a family that makes over 350k a year, putting you in the 1% population of the united states, then harvard asks that you pay the full price to attend their school.
we learned that there is a HUGE rivalry between cambridge and boston.
we also learned that their library goes 6 floors underground extends for 3 blocks.

(dave in front of the philosophy department at harvard)




at the reflecting pools


in the afternoon we took a tour of Fenway Park.
(upon dave's insistent request)





after the tour we went to the bleacher bar, which is literally under the bleachers of the fenway park seating and has an open screen (the size of a few garage doors) looking out upon the outfield. i couldn't imaging that place during a game. i'd opt out of attending.

the belacher bar also had a view of the field from the mens bathroom
(putting it in the category of "daves favorite bathrooms in the united states")


the third day in boston was spent...relaxing.
we had our delicious amazing brunch gifted to us by the other dave barry.
i spent the afternoon by the roof top pool, while dave explored more of the city.
on this trip, we have discovered that dave loves to travel and relaxing to him is exploring everything a new city has to offer. whereas i enjoy traveling too, but really enjoy taking time off to lay out in the sun, to read a book, to sleep in; but differences are a-okay.
our last evening in boston we went to charlies for dinner and then went back later for dessert :) and stopped in for a drink at top of the hub as well.
a great last evening in my one of my favorite cities of the trip.

day 15 of vacation.
we flew back home to CA.
where the humidity is low, and the fog rolling over the bay.
we had a wonderful trip, and definitely sad to see it come to an end.
but we are excited for our next big traveling adventure, which we are hoping will be in europe (italy!) sometime next summer.
and then maybe we'll have a little baby barry join our adventures sometime in 2012.
(of which, we will be sure to keep you posted!)