Now that I’ve had a chance to settle into Barcelona, catch up on sleep after 27 hours being mostly awake (it was hard to stay awake during the last train ride to Barcelona), I can write about Boston 🙂
Day 1: Wednesday
I flew in around 4PM local time Wednesday, and spent most of the day settling in. My hostel was quiet and each bed was in its own pod, similar to how I imagine Toyko’s Capsule hotels will be. This is the only good photo I got of them – I intended to get a nicer one with my camera, but then accidentally stayed past check-out (my booking app said 12, the actual checkout time was 11).
I did stop at a New York Swarma Guys place and get a tasty lamb swarma, but didn’t take a photo of it.
Day 2: North End, Paul Revere House, Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Market, and Seafood
First, I stopped at Bean and Leaf Cafe (underneath a boring looking corporate skyscrape?) and paid a very reasonable $12 for a fresh orange juice and a delicious breakfast burrito.
I didn’t have a set plan for the day, but I wanted a coffee and to go see the water, so I kept walking into the north end.
Along the way to the bay, I stopped at Caffe Ducali, an italian coffee spot joint to a pizza place by the same name. On accident, I told the barista I wanted a “Vanilla espresso” (not a Latte, which is what I actually wanted). When they handed me this tiny cup, I realized my mistake, but was too embarrased to correct it.
I had ordered an espresso, and I was going to drink it!
As it turns out, I actually liked it a lot and came back for another one later. It’s just two espresso shots from the machine with a shot of vanilla syrup, but the coffee was tasty and not too bitter, and the added sweetness of the vanilla made it really nice to slowly sip as I walked around the next hour or so.
My wandering took me next to Copps Hill Burying Ground, Boston’s second oldest graveyard, which was founded in 1659. I sipped my espresso as I wandered around looking at gravestones varying from 150 to almost 400 years old.
I noticed a lot of skulls with wings on the tops of the gravestones–apparently, this was common on pre-revolution gravestones.
One thing (besides how OLD it was!) that I found neat were how you could see the marks from the gravestones being hand-carved. A lot of them had scribing lines that the craftspeople used to keep the text all aligned, as seen in the image below:
After the graveyard, I continued wandering through the North End. Paul Revere’s house only cost $6 to go into, but wasn’t anything especially remarkable, just an old house showing a bit of insight into life during Revere’s time. I did learn that the Revere cookware brand was founded by him, which in hindsight, should have been obvious!
Apparently at this point, I stopped taking pictures of the things I was going to and started taking pictures of things I saw. To be fair, the Institue of Contemprary Art wasn’t that interesting (although they only had two exhibits open that day), and I didn’t stop for food at the markets I passed through. For the rest of the afternoon before going back to my hostel for a break, I slowly walked to the ICA, then back to the hostel. Here are some photos I took along the way.
After a break to refresh at the hostel, I headed back out for Dinner. Josh (my manager during my Rivian internship in 2024) gave me a couple recommendations, so I headed to The Daily Catch, a Scicilian pasta and seafood restaraunt.
I realized after ordering that what I ordered might have been an appetizer, so I also tried some of their house-made black pasta (which was also delicious!)
Cross-city running adventure:
I had plans to meet up with some folks I’d met earlier after dinner, so once I’d finished my food, I paid, ordered an uber, and rode about 2.5 miles away (which took 30 minutes with the roads and traffic). Upon arriving at my destination, I promptly realized I’d forgotten my bag (which had, among other items, my passport) at the restaraunt. Worse still, they closed at 9PM – right when I’d left. Calling got me no response and sent me to a voicemail box that was full. Their website had a contact form, but I really wanted to see if I could get it back now, not tomorrow. It was now 9:30, and an uber back would take another 30 minutes. After looking at Google Maps, I realized walking would be just as fast – and if I ran, I might just get there before the other customers finished eating and they were done cleaning. So run I did.
After about 2 minutes of running I stopped to check Google Maps, realized I’d run in the wrong direction, and started paying attention to the maps. Then, after about 20 minutes of running, running through crosswalks when I wasn’s supposed to, and walking when I needed a break, I got back.
The door was open, and the staff was still cleaning. I walked in, breathlessly explaining that I’d left my bag. My waiter laughed, said “we thought you’d be back!” and handed it to me. Whew!
My evening plans were (obviously) cancelled by that point, so instead, I walked back to the hostel (about 20 minutes) and stopped at Bova’s Bakery (an old, famous, open 24/7 bakery in the North End) for a fruit tart as a treat. After running for 20 minutes and not losing my passport, I felt great!
I was going to put all of boston in one post, but this is already pretty long, so I’ll put my last two days in the next post. We will see how breaking trips into multiple posts works!
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