The Escape to Boston

In a much needed escape from home, my friend Jen and I decided to head to Boston for the night.

There were many lessons learned on this trip not the least of which was, as much as we both love "The Amazing Race" It is NOT for us! In fact in some strange turn of events I am pretty sure that we would cause a national incident and end up in a prison somewhere sharing bread and water and fighting over the burlap sac blanket.

The other big thing I learned was that, no matter how mature amongst our peers we seem...when we get together, we still point to random people and say "There's your boyfriend,” and we still sneak up behind the unsuspecting and snap our pictures with them, although we are not nearly as brazen as we were, we still managed to scare off a colonial re-enactor. The greatest part about this trip was watching our husbands, both the ultimate planners and type A’s squirm, when the week before we hadn’t solidified anything but the night we were going. I think that Jens husband finally slept well when I assured him that we did have a hotel room and that we weren’t going to be sleeping in a dumpster behind Faneuil Hall. True to our style, Jen and I had no plan and we just took it by the seat of our pants and had a ball.

North Station was the beginning of our many debacles of travel. It was like watching two people from another planet try to ask where the bathroom is, when we were trying to figure out buying T-passes.

Jen puts in a 20 and a bunch of “tokens” came out with her ticket. Her face fell, “Well there goes 20$ I didn’t know we would get change in tokens.” We turned to walk away when I realized that her new gold treasure trove was actually those gold dollars that you get at the post office.

Needless to say with 18$ in coins, Jen proceeded to pay for drinks, meals, and tips in change. When waiters would pick up their little black ticket holder, inevitably gold coins would spew out all over the floor, and we were trying to escape as fast as we could frantically pressing elevator buttons. They clearly were not as amused with our lack of common sense as we were.

There was also the issue that we hadn't been out of the house in a while, and this seemed to have impaired us greatly in our communication skills. I spent the first hour winking at our waiter unintentionally when ever he would ask if we needed anything. When Jen pointed it out, I got in such hysteria that we had to leave before we got locked up. It’s ok, because apparently it was catching and she had to actually move seats because she kept staring at someone unintentionally and he kept staring back. It was like we had no social skills at all...that’s what happens when you are trapped in a house for long lengths of time with toddlers...all social etiquette goes out the window! We did finally; however stop the incessant nervous winking and staring after we settled in to our normal selves again. Thankfully.

We met a friend from High School that we hadn’t seen in 15 years that is currently living in Boston. She took us to a great bistro with Jazz music which we finally left at 1 in the morning when we realized that we were the only ones left in the restaurant and the cook actually came out sat on a step and looked at us with that look of “Please Please Please go home silly girls with a camera”
The next day we walked about 400 miles around Boston never really knowing which direction we were going in, because as we found out, we are both seriously directionally challenged…as in we really should have been in remedial radar classes when we were in school. Our direction challenge became even more keenly obvious when we got on the wrong train to go to North Station. (Luckily we figured it out before the next stop, got off, laughed at ourselves and got on the right one….besides it was less crowded.)

We did make it to the North End where the owner of the restaraunt basically harassed us on the street until we went in...although Jen did tell him that he "had her at Sangria"



Much to our family members chagrin, we will probably do it again…and we may even adventure in other towns or cities, or God forbid, countries. We ate our way through Boston, and fully intend on getting lost somewhere again.



Then....

And Now....