"The British are coming! The British are..." Ok, you remember the story!

So, last thing you knew, I had just arrived in Bean Town with my buddy after our week long trek up the East Coast. After unloading the trailer and moving all of my stuff up 3 flights of stairs into the house, we were definitely ready for some food and drink. As luck would have it, I had moved to a city where it’s possible to go out and order food at mid-night. Trina’s Starlight Lounge was the place everybody was talking about, so we gave her a try. A plateful of mac-n-cheese for me & a burger for J.D. was just what the doctor ordered-along with a cold pint too, of course!


After a refreshing night’s rest, we were ready to get out and start exploring the town and seeing some sights. I put off indefinitely my unpacking, telling myself that since my friend only had limited time to spend in Boston, I wasn’t going to make him waste it watching me go through boxes of useless junk. What a great friend I am, right? On that note, 3 weeks later, I’m still making not so good excuses as to why I should continue putting off setting up my room and going through whatever’s in those boxes...either it’s too pretty a day, I’m too engrossed in reading Anna Karenina, I need to look for a job, I’m writing this blog…really just about anything will do.

Anyway, here we are in Boston, with 2 decent bicycles, beautiful New England summer weather and a pocket map of the city my old roommate had given me as a going away gift (or maybe it was just because he wouldn’t be needing it in nursing school in Augusta, Ga?) Therefore: Veni, vidi, veci...or in the plural: We came, we saw, we conquered. We found out there is no cap to how many miles can be ridden criss-cross around Boston, Cambridge & Somerville on a summer day with more daylight than dark. The greatest thing about riding bikes around a new city is that when you go the wrong way, you’re going fast enough that you don’t realize it until you’ve arrived somewhere you weren’t expecting to be, but where you’re glad you’ve gotten to anyway. Those of you, who like me, have gotten lost on foot as a tourist know the agony of walking miles and miles not knowing where you are and then finally having to give up and take that taxi back; it feels like such a waste. Not so on bicycles. Boston and Cambridge actually fill a relatively small area of space around the Bay & along the Charles River; so on bikes, this diameter of about 5 fairly flat miles didn’t seem all that daunting.

This is the spirit in which we traversed Harvard Yard, Central Square, Fenway Park, the Freedom Trail (along which you see a different “Paul Revere” tour guide on every corner…we didn’t go in for that needless to say,) Starrow Drive, Memorial Drive, Faneuil Hall, the North Shore and the Riverway to Olmstead Park, down in Brookline. J.D. was particularly impressed with the 15 mile green-way around the river and down through Brookline, even though we didn’t quite make it all the way to Jamaica Pond and the park that bears the name of the founding father of Landscape Architecture, F.L Olmstead. This is something that I still plan to do on my bike one of these great autumn days I sense coming up just around the corner.

During these first few days here, we also had the pleasure of meeting a couple of my soon to be 4 roommates. Our house is destined to be a bevy of multiculturalism, including, but not limited to: Asian, Jewish, Pacific Islander and mixed European descents…not something I’m accustomed to in roommates, but bound to be interesting with all the different languages & foods; although all of us were born in the USA, so how different can we be, right? Before my arrival, only one of the fellows had moved in already. Since he was coming from fairly close, Philly, he offered to bring most of the furniture for the common areas: couches, table and chairs & best of all, a brand-new 50” HDTV along with an unlimited collection of Blu-Ray DVD’s. I had never seen anything on Blue-Ray before, but along with his surround sound system, let me tell you, it really brings Harry Potter to life (he has the entire Harry Potter & Lord of the Rings collections among others…be jealous). Of course, no time yet for sitting around watching movies, although it’s been great for the start of football season, but I’m sure once those snow-storms of the New England winter set in, I’ll be piled up right here on this couch plenty happy to stay inside 24/7. There was some disagreement about who would take which rooms, but everything is good now & it seems that we are all content with the way things worked out (I will post a tour of the house sometime soon…)

Well, yet again, I feel that I’ve gone overboard with details on this post, so I’ll save more on my career plans for a later date, but I have to mention at least our trip to Fenway Park, the oldest, still-in-operation baseball stadium in the U.S. There’s not a bad seat in the house & even though we arrived a little late to a Tuesday night game against the Angels due to savoring some excellent Fish ‘n Chips and Shepherd’s Pie at The Druid in Inman Square, the game was all it was billed to be: Big Papi in all his glory (That’s David Ortiz for you baseball illiterates), Boston accents yelling epithets from every side, a grand-slam homer! & refreshments almost just as overpriced as the Braves games at home. But, the stadium itself has maintained that age-old, take-me-out-to-the-ballgame feel that has been lost on the new stadium (with a name like Turner Field who are we kidding anyway…) in Atlanta & I can definitely say that the opportunity of seeing one of the oldest clubs in America play on their home turf was unforgettable.

Hope you enjoy these pictures & 1 video below!
 

In Hahvahd Yahd...

Harvard Square

Memorial Hall (Built after the Civil War as a memorial to the soldiers)

Mine is the 2nd from right (ha!)

Riding the Greenway along Memorial Drive on Cambridge side of Charles River

Guess who loaned me on of his Thrift-store tank-tops?

Incredible place for a bike-ride...

River Park near Science Museum

Don't remember who he is, but nice modern cubist sculpture...

Brookline, at the mouth of Olmstead Park

Boston University's Boat House

The face of pure baseball bliss...

Thanks for playing, come again...