A delayed birthday trip to New England sounded like an amazing way to ring in the huge milestone of turning 34 years old. You only turn that random age once so why not do something equally as random like visit Boston during a pandemic. After a 5.5 hour direct flight from San Diego to Boston, we were there to embrace whatever we could.
The first thing we noticed right away was how friendly everyone from Massachusetts was. When you and the rental car agent have a good laugh you know your dealing with super friendly people. As we arrived at 11 pm and restaurants are required to close at 10 pm— we were left scouring for anyone brave enough to defy the orders. With no takers found— our first meal in Boston ended up being at Wendy’s. The fast-food hamburger and chicken nuggets did the trick.
Afterward, we drove around the North End (the Italian area of Boston), we found a 24-hour bakery called Bova’s Bakery and grabbed a calzone and some deserts before turning in for the night on a sugar buzz. Eating the delicious pastries and desserts on a full stomach made us wish we had known about this place 45 minutes earlier and skipped the fast-food drive-thru. The streets were so narrow in this area that we kept hitting every curb when we turned.
The next morning we woke up refreshed, bundled up (temps were in the 30’s) and set out to the one quintessential Boston history lesson we remembered— the Boston Tea Party. A replica boat where you could throw the tea, samples of the waterlogged tea, and a gift shop had us dropping some cash to recreate this experience. I was left unsupervised and picked up a souvenir for Ashley, our friend Erica’s daughter who we act as Uncles too, that I thought was extremely cool. I later showed it to Grant and he told me it was extremely stupid. He asked: what is a 15-year-old girl going to do with a magnifying glass? Point for Grant.
Our next stop was the Boston Public Market and waking along some of the Freedom Trail. After heading to Paul Reveres House and visiting the All-Saints monument we wanted some higher quality food. After a quick search of what was around us, we decided on Italian from Giacomo’s Ristorante. This six-table restaurant was packed, had a line, and had us pulling out cash from an ATM to eat here. It was good, but another bakery, This one recommended by our friend Kelsey, called Mike’s Pastry, right down the way, with homemade cannolis and cookies, really seemed to hit the spot. I guess cannoli beats chicken parmigiana in our book.
We returned to the car to realize that we parked in the wrong garage and couldn’t validate. A costly $42 mistake for a two-hour stay seemed a bit high, but you live and learn. No wonder there was a beat-up sign near the elevator that read “Please do not kick the buttons.” Other tourists had fallen victim to this highway robbery as well and taken out their aggression on the equipment. After getting back in the car, we went up and down the streets looking at the architecture and visiting the sites.
When I initially booked the trip, I was watching National Treasure and swore they said they were at the Trinity Church in Boston. I made the church a must to look at because of this. Turns out— the movie was at the Trinity Church in NY. So I ended up visiting a random church in Boston called Trinity. A local woman did come up to me and asked what I was taking a photo of, which should have been a clue.
Continuing our horribly clumsy history tour that we did not research beforehand— we decided to move onto Plymouth, Massachusetts. Why— because of Plymouth Rock. Arriving in Plymouth was a blast trying to remember elementary history as to what happened here. We learned that we should never go on Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? because the answer is Definite No. After visiting the rock and the replica Mayflower, we couldn’t think of any other reason to be there so onward to the next colony— Rhode Island.
While everyone in Massachusetts was super friendly the opposite was true for those in Rhode Island. People were a bit cold, unhelpful, and in certain conversations rude. Our first city to visit in Rhode Island was Pawtucket. Ever heard of it? We thought we had so we stopped. Fun fact—turns out Pawtucket was where the first fully mechanized cotton-spinning mill happened. Not impressed? Neither were we so we continued to the capital of RI which is Providence.
A freezing cold Grant made it very clear that unless there was something to see or do that he was happy skipping Providence. I hopped out and went exploring a bit with Grant idling in the car heat. The capital was extremely accessible and so I was able to snap a few fun shots with my trusty selfie/tripod-stick and that was it. In doing my research, I couldn’t find much to do in that area so based on the recommendation of my colleague Kristin we kept heading south to Newport.
After checking into our hotel — courtesy of Roger Sissom (Thank You Roger!) we made our way over to White Horse Tavern, America’s Oldest Tavern having been established in 1673. The restaurant has aged well and the food was delicious. They put us in a very quaint room upstairs where we shared the space with one other table. It was very intimate and anything that was said was heard by everyone. The good news is that I learned that Grant will come out of voluntary hibernation for beef wellington so that will be a useful tip for years to come. As the sun faded away so to did our adventure for the day.
The next morning I woke up with a question— how many states could we visit in New England in one day? The answer is six— Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.
Rhode Island was easy because that is where we started the night before. We woke up and began to explore the Queens Ann area and the Bowen Warf region. Charming shops and restaurants littered the brick paths and quickly reminded us of West Coast warfs, but with colonial buildings. After picking up a few small things, we bid adieu to the mellow laidback area for ...an even calmer destination of Hartford, Connecticut.
The pace of this area was a bit slower than what we are used to so we really had to focus while driving and nut run people over. If we had, we could have just walked to one of the high rises and deal with the insurance company face to face. The one thing I knew about Hartford was that a lot of insurance companies were headquartered in this area and the skyline reflected this. We wandered around a bit, but this state was just a path forward to our real destination.
When I booked this trip (besides being incorrectly motivated by National Treasure), I also sold this trip to Grant as a way of visiting the colleges/university that I have taught at going on 9 years that I had never set foot on. The first one was 35 minutes north of Hartford in Springfield, Massachusetts.
I had first worked at the satellite campus of Springfield College in Orange County and then transferred to the main campus that we were visiting about 6 years ago. What is extremely cool about this school is that it is the birthplace of basketball (my favorite sport). After wandering around campus a bit and chatting it up with some of the students Grant and I headed to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. We didn’t realize it, but the museum closed at 4 pm, which gave us no time to experience the entire museum. However, the ticket attendant was awesome and let us into the end of the museum via the elevator system without charging us. So we got to see some of the exhibits, hang out on the court and also visit the gift shop.
The last stop in Springfield was the Dr. Seuss Museum. We were not sure if this is something we had to pay for or not, but we did sort of let ourselves in to check out the sculptures in the park. It was neat seeing life-size replicas of these fabled characters. After a quick photo op, we were off to my next school.
A surprise to Grant and me both was that the way the highway we were on curved we went through Vermont or Bernie Sanders land. The town we ended going through was called Brattleboro, Vermont. A charming hippie little town with some historic backstory that we didn’t bother looking up. At this point, we were done with the history lesson and were more interested in a culinary lesson. Fortunately, this town also did that in the form of a Polish food truck that Grant breaked for. We weren’t hungry but I am not going to turn down homemade pierogies and kielbasa.
And with the last bite of horseradish going down, we bitterly left Vermont for hillier pastures in New Hampshire. From what we had seen of New England so far the topography was a bit flat so it was nice to see levels and dimensions. We followed the thawing stream that lined the road to Henniker, New Hampshire home to my second college aptly named New England College. This college town was unfortunate to experience a surge in COVID outbreaks, which caused the school to move exclusive remote for the time we were there. The school itself was charming with dorms, frat houses, classrooms, and an admin building lining multiple streets. I did learn that I need to check the weather in the area when a student claims to be “late” on an assignment as they may just be skiing!
The last school I teach for in the area, Southern New Hampshire University was fairly close in Manchester, NH. By the time we got over to the campus, it was dark. The school seems to advertise itself every five minutes on TV, but finding a logo on campus for a picture was near impossible! We ended up finding a place and snapped a shot before heading into town for dinner. We stopped at a cute little restaurant called North End Bistro before driving to our final state Maine.
By this time, it was pitch black and driving from NH to Maine wasn’t ideal. Tired and worn out, I dropped Grant off at the Portland, Maine hotel that Roger Sissom got us (again Thank You Roger) and drove up and down the street. There were a fair amount of cops around, which has me worried that there was some unknown curfew in effect. Instead of risk it, I returned to the hotel for an early morning start.
Maine = Lobster. A restaurant called Luke’s Lobster right on the water was a no-brainer. Grant isn’t a huge fan of seafood, and I don’t eat a lot of seafood so we were the proverbial fish out of the water at this place. I ordered the steamed lobster and the whole guy came out. Due to COVID, they handed us what I thought was just silverware. I didn’t see that underneath the napkins was a lobster cracker. I am grabbing this steamed lobster and trying to manhandle it with a fork and knife. I got the tail off, but when I got to claws I knew something wasn’t right. I grabbed the last napkin and low and behold were the lobster crackers. I crushed the claws and my burnt fingers rejoiced in not having to deal with the hot claws. After grabbing a few more souvenirs and checking out the Portland Head Light, we set sail for our return flight to Boston that left later that day.
On the way south, we knew horror movie fanatic like ourselves couldn’t help but stop at the birthplace of so many witch movies— Salem, Ma. I remember learning in 5th Grade— Salem is host to where hundreds of innocent women were burned because they were thought to be witches. Maybe you are smarter than Grant and me because big let down to us— only 20 people died during the Salem Witch Trial over a year and none were burned— all of them were hanged. The image that we had of Salem was created by Hollywood and not reality. This built-up city tries to cash in on the history lesson but does seem to be fading.
We landed in Boston and then got on the airplane. I have now seen my schools and Grant and I lived out our childhood history lessons. For now, we are ready to go back to California and live the California dream. We will let LaLaLand tell us a bit more entertaining history lesson of the United States.