Home Sweet Home: Boston

Boston, how I've missed you. With ever fiber of my being.

Being here feels so.. interesting. The sounds, sights, smells are all so familiar, and yet I feel like a visitor. I got in last night, the evening of the 4th to torrential downpours. A category 1 hurricane. I missed the fireworks as they were moved to the 3rd due to the weather. Meh.

I took the bus to the Back Bay part of the city and met my friend and her dog, Oliver, at the Copley stop. I used to work right across the street and really love this part of town. It's so familiar and comfortable. We walked the five minutes to her apartment right on Commonwealth (Comm) Ave. It's two blocks from the Public Garden-- amazing part of town.

A friend of hers in the building is staying in another larger apartment this summer, so her apartment is available. She wants people to stay there, at a cost of a book recommendation. Amazing.

Her place is a very small studio and perfectly laid out to maximize the space. The area is really expensive but being able to walk out to the center of it all is just amazing. She's in a building with 30 apartments, ranging in size but all still quite small.

I found out last night that her friend has a terminal illness. She bought the apartment to be in the city near the hospital where she gets her treatments. I'll meet her at some point on this trip and can't wait to give her a huge hug for making this trip possible. Hotels in this area are quite expensive. It was a dream of mine to stay in the city for this visit, and she gave me the opportunity to. I am so thrilled and grateful.

My friend has the coolest dog, who reminds me so much of my Che in a different package. He's very social and his face is really expressive.

We decided to venture out last night for tapas, and went to a cute place called LolaBar. It was amazing. Just a few blocks from the apartment, with great sangria and the tapas were wonderful. We got this amazing lemony garlicky artichoke heart dish, potatas bravas, a lamb and tomato sauce dish, and shrimp mango dish. Yumm... We then decided to go catch a movie. Shona always knows great places to go, and we went to a little indie theater in Kendall Sq, Cambridge. As she was telling me that she rarely drives and often gets lost, we circled time and time and time and time again proving her point.

We finally made it to the theater parking lot, laughing out butts off. We made it with ten minutes spare which was quite impressive. :) The movie was really great: Obvious Child. We both enjoyed it and headed home in the still pouring rain.

I woke to find my phone doesnt' work in the apartment (thick concrete walls) and I had no internet. Drat. So we planned to walk together in the am, but I had no way of reaching her. I went down to what I thought was her place and knocked then left a note. I tried her several more times, and finally gave up to go downstairs in search of food. I called her then as my phone worked, to find that she had tried to reach me as well! We went for breakfast at a cute little cafe in the South End, then went to the grocery store to pick up some things. I loved feeling like I live here-- even if for a short while.

Today we are going to walk a bit, then go see a show called Ordinary People in the South End, a great area for walking around. There's a lot of mature-tree lined streets, and houses that look like NYC brownstones. It's beautiful! Lots of galleries and restaurants. It was cleaned up and gentrified and is really gorgeous now.
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The show was amazing! How I miss Boston. It was really funny and thought-provoking. I'd highly recommend it.

We walked the dog a bit through some of Back Bay, the Public Garden and the Boston Common. The garden looks SO beautiful with all the gorgeous plantings, the little pond with ducks and swans and people everywhere.

Then we met up with a friend and walked over towards the North End for Italian food. We walked back through the garden and common, through the Government Center area, which is under construction, through Haymarket. One of the biggest transformations is there, between Haymarket and the North end where the highway overpass used to be. All of the steel girders were replaced by a gorgeous park with kids playing. Wow. I just stood and stared, it was such a change to take in.

The north end was similar though many restaurants were different. We chose a place that my friend's friend had been to before, put our name in (va bene, we were told) and walked around a few minutes to enjoy the scene before going back and getting seated. It was incredibly crowded as we expected on a Saturday night. The food was amazing. The service great and damned if I can remember the name of the place! Drat. We stopped by Cafe Paradiso for a piece of tiramisu and headed back, walking a slightly different way.

The weather couldn't have been more perfect, around 80 or just over at a high, and in the low 70s as we walked back. Clear skies, a light breeze-- makes me want to move back! I can't wait to see more!