Beantown

Oh, the things we do for love! :) Sean and I have been trying to see each other about every 6 weeks to try to get through this last part of my time here in Europe. He's come here a few times, and I spent some time in Portland back in August. We are running into a vacation time problem, however, so we decided that rather than having either one of us take a whole week off again, we would just "meet in the middle" for a long weekend. The true middle between Amsterdam and Portland is somewhere in the middle of the ocean, so Boston was about the best we could do. It was a 5 hour flight for Sean and about 8 hours for me to get there. It seemed approriate to visit Boston v. New York City since it is also the city that we had talked about wanting to visit on our very first date two and a half years ago! :) It was both of our first times in the city, and we both absolutely LOVED it! :) It was kind of trippy for me - it's one of America's oldest cities, so it felt almost European, but it was full of Americans! Best of both worlds?!?

We both arrived at about the same time on Thursday afternoon. It was so great to see each other after weeks of "counting down"... we always count down the days, then the hours, until we get to see each other. Our method of counting is different though... I believe that you don't count the day that it is or the day that you are actually leaving, so I'm usually about two days less than Sean's count. :) He thinks I'm a BAD accountant! ;)

Rather than getting a hotel, we rented an apartment in a part of town that looked really cute - Beacon Hill. It was so nice to feel like we really lived there, and we checked out some shops and cute restaurants in our own 'hood.

Our first night, we ventured out on the underground system to the "North End", which is where all the Italians live. We ate at this cute restaurant called Dolce Vita, and the owner ended up being from Agrigento, one of the towns I visited in Sicily. He was SO excited to hear that I had been to his hometown, and kept kissing my hand and calling me "Bella." It was cute, and made me feel not so far away from all the great places I have been lately. The food was pretty good, but I'm becoming a bit of an Italian snob... I could tell that the bruscetta was about one day too old (usually, you use about 1 day old bread... this was older than that!) and the espresso wasn't quite right. I'm going to be in for a rude awakening in a few months! :) We spent that evening at an Irish pub, just enjoying each other's company and bad kareoke. :)

Friday we spent the day on the "Freedom Trail". It's a path that is marked with red bricks and goes all through Boston, passing by famous places like the old town hall where the Declaration of Independence was read and the cemetery where Paul Revere is buried. It was a nice little walk through my gradeschool history book. :)


Acorn street on Beacon Hill, where we stayed



The State House


Paul Revere's House on the Freedom Trail


Creepy headstones at an old graveyard


KP with the USS Constitution


View from the top of the Bunker Hill Memorial - 296 stairs! :)


Boston Commons - we loved the fall colors!

We had another nice dinner, and more nice conversation. The thing that I miss most is exactly this - having time to talk for hours... I miss this with Sean. I miss this with my friends. Everyone has tried to make an effort to keep in touch, and it has been great and has gotten me through, but I cannot wait to chat with a girlfriend for hours at a coffee shop or over a bottle of wine. These are the moments I treasure and miss.

Saturday we started the day with a trip to the JFK Memorial Library. Okay, silly me, I thought that since it was called a LIBRARY, it was a LIBRARY. Well, no, not quite. It's an amazing museum and memorial to JFK. I was once again super inspired and enlightened, and saw the "I have a dream" speech for the second weekend in a row. So glad we went. That part of history has always interested me, and it was great to learn more.

JFK Library
After that, we took the subway to Harvard, which is just outside of Boston in Cambridge. We had a nice time just walking around the beautiful campus.

Hah-vahd, dah-ling

Sean near the Business School at Harvard

Harvard by Night

For dinner that night, we went to the place where everybody knows your name, the bar that inspired Cheers. Well, they didn't know our names, but we still had a great time. :)

Yes, Sean, we HAVE to take a picture!

Sunday, my Aunt Carol & Uncle Brian drove into the city to have breakfast with us. It was really nice to get to see them, as it's been hard for me to get to see my mom's side since I moved to Portland. We had a nice visit, and then they drove us to the airport to pick up a rental car. We had done really well with planning up until Sunday... we weren't staying at a hotel, and our flights weren't leaving until that evening, so we hadn't really thought about what to do with our bags... we solved that problem by just renting a car and driving with them! We visited the beautiful town of Marblehead, and then made our way to Salem, home of the Salem Witch Trials. It's especially busy around this time of year with Halloween coming up! :) We visited the Witch History Museum and then just walked around.

Witch Memorial... 19 people were innocently hung/pressed during the Salem Witch Trials

Beautiful East Coast View

When we got back to our car to go to the airport, we had a mini-panic... there was a HUGE Harley parade blocking our car in. We took a deep breath and waited for it to be over... and waited... and waited. It finished up after about 15 minutes, and then we heaved a sigh of relief and made our way to the airport. Saying goodbye is always so hard. To be honest, the whole thing is really hard... saying hello. Saying goodbye. Trying to pretend things are normal when you only get to see each other once every 6 weeks. But, somehow, we manage.

Harley's, Harley's everywhere!

Looking forward to the next time... which isn't too far away! Sean will be here with my parents at the end of November! Can't wait to see all of the people I love most! :)