Frogs, On Ice

The last "real" day of our vacation was our attempt at relaxing and taking it all in. Officially, we were off for one more day, but the next day would be spent traveling so it doesn't hardly count as real vacation. It's not even a work day so we couldn't take solace in the fact that we were skipping out of being in the office. So, anyway, this was our final day in Boston.

I love staying at B&B's. If you can find a good B&B, I think they're far better than a hotel. Personally, I like the B&B's where you can sit down with the other guests at a big table and chat over breakfast (warm, if possible). We didn't get warm breakfasts at this place, but we always had plenty of fresh food for breakfast and the conversation with the other guests was great. I've already mentioned some of the other guests we bumped into - Bruno the art dealer and Russel and John, the gay couple. This morning we ran into an entirely new cast. One couple had just gotten engaged the night before, which was exciting, but they kept to themselves and vanished shortly after we arrived. The other couple, however, we chatted with for some time - Mia and Gene. Mia was an artist from New York while Gene was a programmer from LA. The two met at a kayaking expedition in Mexico and had been together ever since - they've now been married for two years.





We struck up a conversation quickly and I found out just what Gene did when he said that he was excited to see the "History of Video Games" exhibit that was in town. Turns out, he runs a programming company that makes video games for mobile phones. So, naturally, the two of us talked shop for a little while about what we each do. Obviously, we're both programmers, but we're on entirely different ends of the spectrum. They were a load of fun to talk to. I doubt I'll ever see them again, but I did get Gene's e-mail address, so who knows?

Nonetheless, it's like I said - you never know who you might bump into at a B&B.

After breakfast, we took a walk to Boston Commons to see if we could take a trolley ride about the city. We did eventually find the office we were looking for - apparently, there are multiple trolley rides available in the town. However, when it came time to wait for the trolley to arrive, we were left waiting in the cold with no idea how long it'd be for one to arrive. We're very impatient people so, after just a few minutes, we wandered off through Boston Commons to see what came of the Frog Pond, where we had seen the zamboni a couple days earlier. We found this:





It was the first weekend the rink was open for skating and there were plenty of folks there to take it in, including these two yahoos.






Naturally, we got ourselves some horrible rented skates and got onto the ice - quite literally, we followed the zamboni off the ice and were treated to fresh ice in Boston Commons. Gorgeous. While Liz remains partial to the lightning show at the Science Museum, skating in the Commons may have been my favorite part of the entire vacation. I love being on the ice.

We skated for the better part of an hour before deciding we'd best be off to see what else we could for the day. So we made our way back to the trolley stop just in time to see our trolley pull away. We waited. We went to Starbucks. We waited some more. Finally, the trolley came.

The tour was fine, but we didn't really see much more of the city than we already had and the seats were so close together that my knees ended up with bruises on 'em. We took the trolley all the way around town and hopped off near Quincy Market, where we intended to get some lunch.

The quaint market we had been to a few days prior had completely transformed. The place was swarming with people. Until this time, I don't think I ever really realized just how many people live in Boston. Wednesday, Thursday, and even Friday, had been pretty calm and, while there were always people around, you never had to focus keenly on navigating waves of people. This day was completely different. We found some horrible food to eat for lunch (Liz had a couple corn dogs and I had hot dogs smothered with melted cheese) and got the heck out of there as fast as we could. Our next stop? Fenway. I wanted a picture of the Green Monster before we had to leave town.

We hopped onto the most crowded subway we'd been on all weekend and suffered through it until we reached our stop. A couple blocks away and we were at the park.





Unfortunately, that's as close as we'd come to the Green Monster of Fenway. We got there only to find out that they'd completely sold out for tours on the day and, as this was our last day is Boston, we weren't going to have another chance to see the stadium. It was disappointing, but we consoled ourselves with a walk through a beautiful Boston neighborhood and back to our B&B (and right past a Rachel Ray book signing which we didn't stop for as the wife noted "I've had enough of people." Boston is a busy place on Saturdays, I can assure you.)

We proceeded to nap away the afternoon while watching bad movies on cable. It was a good way to rest the legs and relax after a few long days.

Later in the evening, we got ourselves up and dressed and went off to a tiny little place for dinner called Metropolis Cafe. The place was absolutely amazing. I doubt it seats more than 50 people and it's jammed, all the time. I'm glad we had the woman at the B&B make us a reservation. It was certainly more upscale than most places we'd eat, but the food was absolutely fabulous. Liz had some sort of risotto with steak while I had pork tenderloin with caramelized pears. Quite possibly the perfect end to a great vacation.

So now our vacation is over. I'm sitting back at home on the couch wrapping things up on my laptop. Work beckons in about 8 hours and I still need to get to bed. Some others were trying to keep me company, but didn't fare as well.





This was one of our favorite vacations - it was just about perfect. The B&B we stayed at was exquisite. The food was outstanding (even the cheese covered hot dogs weren't too bad). The city is gorgeous with all the red brick. Plus, I got to go ice skating. Perhaps someday, we'll go back.

By the way, I didn't post every picture we took while we were out there, but I've uploaded a good number of them to flickr. You can find 'em here.