Just Beachy!

Not large or fancy, but great value

This was our small but adequate Boston accommodations. Fantastic location, decent space (unless you actually wanted to dry off in the bathroom, but that’s another story). But then we arrived at our home for the week on Cape Cod.

View from our room

Oh. My. You can see the beach from our window and the deck outside it. You can walk to said beach in about 1.5 minutes. So we did.


Life is good.
Especially when this is just 3 minutes away.

Chicken Oscar (w/lobster, asparagus, & bearnaise sauce)

Stuffed sole

Seafood trio in tomato cream sauce

Life is very good.

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Just Wondering…

What is up with the little door to the right? We saw these all over Boston. Is there a large population of little people in Boston or something? Seriously, I walked past several of these and they didn’t come up to my shoulders (I’m 5’5″ so not I’m an Amazon or anything). At least one of them had a doormat out front.

I don’t get it. Does anybody know about these?

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Remember

Just over from Faneuil Hall, right off the Freedom Trail, is this:

Tall glass columns with steam rising up inside them. Do they remind you of anything? Smokestacks, maybe? From gas chambers?

It’s a Holocaust memorial. You walk through it.

Etched on the glass are stories from survivors. Short, heartwrenching stories like the barber who was forced to cut women’s hair on their way to the gas chamber. The prisoner who had to help dig up buried bodies (to incinerate them) and uncovered their entire family’s bodies.
Also etched on the glass were these:

One of the stories was about what it’s like to have a number tattooed on your arm, knowing that it will always be there as a reminder. As if you needed a reminder of that awful time and place.
I’ve been to several Holocaust memorials, including the one in Israel. Boston’s was one of the most impactful.

Remember.

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Beefcake for Lunch

After our healthy (ha!) breakfast our intrepid band set off to tackle the subway system. Which, eventually, we did. (Subway pics are boring, you don’t want to see those, do you? Good, because we didn’t take any.)

Our first destination was Walgreen’s, because somebody (not the author of this post) forgot to pack their prescriptions. They weren’t going to be ready for a while, so we decided to go downstairs for lunch (no exciting local cuisine, just basic food). We had just placed our order when the fire alarm sounded. Nobody moved…until the manager, sighing, assured us we really did need to leave.

So we moved outside, along with the Walgreens pharmacists, office types, and the waitstaff. And we waited. A man from the next table mourned, “I just put the first french fry in my mouth…” He got no sympathy from me—-he should’ve brought his plate with him! (I would have.) So we waited. And waited. And then this happened:

Don’t you just love a man in uniform?

Eventually the alarm went off, the firemen went off on another call, and we went back inside to eat. No extra charge for the show.

After lunch we moseyed (we’re Texans, we mosey well) to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Fabulous! No cameras allowed, which is unfortunate because the whole thing is built around an amazing courtyard filled with sculpture, a fountain, a Roman mosaic pavement, and exquisite plants and flowers. Everywhere we went, there were windows into the courtyard. Mrs. Gardner also collected autographs from people like Tchaikovsky, Brahms, and George Washington. Oh, and the art! Botticelli, Sargent, Rembrandt, and the like. Lovely!

One other thing of note: there were medieval choir loft seats with high arm rests. The seats folded up so the singers could stand resting their backs against the seat with their elbows on the arm rests. Hello, Meyerson Symphony Center? We the chorus would really appreciate these!

That took most of the day, so all we had time and energy for was to shop. I picked up a pair of dress Crocs for concerts! Seriously, they have black patent and little bows. SO cute!

Perfect for long concerts!

Then what with all that walking, lusting after courtyards, gazing at art, it was time for a little restorative. So we went back to our little dining spot of the night before and did this:

Oh yes, we did.

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