a wide place

Hello blog friends! I am excited to tell you the story of my weekend trip to Boston.

David has been asking me for years to take a fun trip — something just for me. But it appears that I’m a homebody when it comes right down to it, and also for years the sheer amount of work involved in leaving the family for several days and traveling felt too daunting.

But now our kids are older and more independent, and our church is older and more independent, and so it seemed suddenly that this was The Year!

Jessica and I have been friends since Amie was born. We first connected 15 years ago, as members of our last church, through loving living overseas. She’d recently moved home from Russia; I was preparing to move to India. I didn’t have a car then and David was always gone with seminary and ordination and missions fund-raising, so Jessica would come to visit me in our tiny suburban apartment and we’d drink hot tea and chat, with my toddler and baby interrupting us every 3 minutes or so.

And we’ve been friends ever since. Through my abrupt return home from India and illness, then starting our church together, book clubs, and growth groups, adoption and my passel of kids growing up, her teaching career and grad degree, through good and hard times for each of us. She’s one of the best travelers I know, and was an obvious choice for a Girls’ Trip.

We knew we wanted to go to a big city, so decided on Boston because Jessica loves it and I’d never been. We choose Columbus Day weekend since she had Monday off school. Fun fact about Jessica: she loves planning trips so much that she’s considered becoming a travel agent just so that she can get discounts for planning trips for herself and her friends.

She asked me a few questions about the kind of trip I wanted to take, and then went to work. Everything wonderful you are about to read is because of her careful research and planning. Also, she may have dubbed our trip: Nerdy Girls’ Weekend.

So here goes!

Jessica picked me up at 6:00 a.m. Friday morning, and we drove to Charleston for a 10:30 flight on JetBlue. We chose to do this because of the price and because we could get a direct flight (my favorite).

This is one reason we’re good travel companions: we jumped in the car with our steaming mugs of coffee and listened to The Invisible Man, by H.G. Wells, on the drive to Charleston. It’s our book club novel for October and we were very entertained by the story.

We had an hour and a half delay at the airport, but have no fear: we each had our Kindles loaded with books for the wait.

You know what I loved most about JetBlue? The leg room!

We landed in Boston at 2pm, too late to drop our carry-on suitcases before our tea reservation at 3:00, so we caught a cab for the Beacon Hill neighborhood.

We found a kindred spirit in our 77-year-old taxi driver, who loves Charles Dickens and Boston’s history. He said I was his first passenger in nearly 3 decades who’s actually read Bleak House all the way through. Not to brag, but I’ve read it twice!

Beacon Hill Books & Cafe

Our first stop, naturally, was a book store. This narrow, three-story bookshop is a rare find in today’s world: it sells only books! Seriously, there was a tiny display of notecards and souvenirs, but otherwise it was wall-to-wall books. Also you may remember that we still had our suitcases! The staff very kindly crammed them behind the tiny counter for us so we could browse and visit the cafe.

There were painted built-ins, cozy alcoves, and fireplaces on each floor. I could’ve spent the afternoon curled up here, except it was crowded (a fact I attempted to eliminate from most of my photos). Jessica and I quickly learned that October is a very popular time to visit Boston, especially on a holiday weekend. I’m thankful she could make reservations for most everything we did.

The children’s floor had a little secret door, as well as an electric train that ran along the ceiling. I decided that if I didn’t have a shelf of books lining my own living room ceiling, I’d want an electric train, of course.

At 3:00, we slipped next door to the Beacon Hill Cafe for our cream tea reservation. What is a “cream tea,” you ask? Wikipedia and my mother-in-law tell us that it’s “an afternoon tea consisting of tea, scones, clotted cream, jam, and sometimes butter.”

We were utterly charmed by the minuscule hidden cafe courtyard, the low ceilings and exposed wood beams, the tile floors and blue-papered walls.

There’s nothing so restorative after a day of travel than a pot of tea and fresh-from-the-oven scones in a basement cafe. Also, Jessica cannot say no to pears, so afterward, we split a pear cardamom cobbler with creamy-tart labneh ice cream.

The hotel.

We took a Lyft to our hotel, the Sheraton in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston, selected for its affordability and walk-ability. The hotel is under renovation and we were thankful to get one of the newly-renovated rooms up on the 22nd floor, where it was nice and quiet. We also had a view of the Charles River. We dropped our things and freshened up before setting back out for the evening.

Boston Public Garden.

One of my all-time favorite children’s books is The Trumpet of the Swan, by E.B. White, so I told Jessica I wanted to be sure to walk through the Public Garden and imagine Louis and Serena in the pond with the swan boats. Also this is the park where Robert McCloskey’s book, Make Way for Ducklings, takes place. So much literary history here.

The park was just a few blocks from our hotel, so we walked the bustling city sidewalks at 5pm, and I just stared, wide-eyed, all around me. I love the diversity of big cities. The varying skin tones, accents, languages. Besides the tourists and the locals, there are lots and lots of college students in Boston. I lost count of how many colleges and universities are in this city alone.

Thank you, Robert McCloskey, for bringing our family and many, many others such delight through your books.

Here’s a fact I learned this weekend: the Public Garden is the oldest public park in the world. I know it’s not popular these days to be proud of our country, and certainly we have a great many flaws, but this fact is one of those that makes me proud to be an American.

Bistro du Midi.

We wrapped up Day One with a leisurely dinner at Bistro du Midi. Jessica showed me options for restaurants at each of our meal times and we chose together. Who doesn’t want to kick off Girls Weekend in the city with French food & wine? We shared quite possibly the best charcuterie board I’ve tasted (I’m going to try to recreate it back home), then on to a burger and frites.

Here’s a disclaimer: you’re going to read a lot about food in these posts. And a lot of authors. Also I may over-use the words “charming” and “quaint.”

After dinner we walked back to the hotel and were ready to fall into bed with our Kindles by 8:30 after our 5am wake-up call. Another reason Jessica and I make good travel companions: we like to start our mornings early and go to bed early.

Good night, Boston! I love you already.