Two weekends ago (from the date above, not from today :) I went to visit my friend Sarah in Boston. I went for four days (Matt stayed home with the kiddos) and had a great time. On Friday Sarah had to work, but she let me borrow her car. I drove up to Maine to see the setting for a book I read recently, Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy. It was set in a tiny town on the coast of Maine. The main character in it was the son of the pastor at this church. It was historical fiction, but the church and town are real. I thought it was pretty brave of me to drive to a town in Maine all by myself in a borrowed car- but maybe I just don't get out much!
The pastor even let me see the inside.
On Saturday I went out sightseeing with Sarah and her boyfriend, Patrick. They were both great sports about driving me around to all the tourist places. Driving there was terrifying and confusing and I was happy that I only had to do it on Friday. Patrick took it all in stride and didn't mind taking several wrong turns! Although the roads are crazy, it seemed like the drivers were more tolerant of each other because of it. I was only honked at only once the whole day and I know I made of lot of mistakes. I'm honked at at least once a day in Northern VA, even if I don't make any mistakes. This is the sight of the Boston Tea Party.
The Minuteman statue at Lexington.
Friday was pouring down rain, but you can see that Saturday was beautiful.
Here comes my very favorite thing about Boston: the colors of the houses. I have never been in a city with so many different paint colors on the houses. All different shades of red, yellow, orange, blue, purple, pink, and of course boring brown and gray. This blue one below was one of my favorites. I loved sitting in the car looking at all the beautiful colors as Sarah and Patrick tried to figure out which way to go. The little town in Maine had some of the best ones, but the road was quite narrow and the rain deterred me from getting out of the car just for photos. I feel like you couldn't pull these colors off in most suburbs, but something about Boston made them work.
This was one of the only houses I saw where I didn't like the bright color, but it still illustrates what you can do there that you can't most places. This house is huge and looked pretty new and is painted bright (the picture doesn't do it justice) yellow. Very bold.
A purple one! The only other purple house I've seen is my grandma's, and she had it painted purple herself. I saw several in Boston. And a lot of mauve and pink ones too.
Sunday we walked the Freedom Trail, which is a walking tour of Boston that passes most of the famous places in the city's history.
These are apartment buildings in Beacon Hill, an upper class expensive neighborhood in the heart of Boston. Beautiful, but Sarah told me they probably didn't have washers and dryer in the apartments, and maybe not even dishwashers. I wasn't quite as jealous after that.
The capitol building.
We saw a couple of old graveyards. This one had several headstones with interesting engravings.
The little cuties I left behind.
I had a great time. Matt is always willing to be a single dad for a weekend to give me a break and I know I'm lucky to have him. I've wanted to visit Boston for quite a while and I'm glad I got the chance!
Since I didn't label the last half of this post until January, I forgot a lot of the names of the buildings I took pictures of. Maybe Sarah can help me out with that. Also, although I didn't take any pictures of this, we ate out at several delicious restaurants, including a bakery that sold cannoli. I didn't know you could get cannoli that wasn't made with ricotta cheese. I enjoyed my chocolate mousse cannoli much more than the cheese one I had in New York. Cheese isn't a dessert!
