Saturday, July 13th – Sunday, July 14th 2019

Boston is a very comfortable city, clean and spacious, unlike some of our more claustrophobic bigger cities. I ask myself what was my favorite part. As a tourist, I’d probably have to say the history. While I am very much not a history person, few cities can claim, well U.S. cities at least, such a unique and important past: the oldest this in America, the oldest that in America… So for this reason, Boston stands out as a place to visit.

From a personal perspective, I love the city for how livable it seems. It is a place to raise a family. Every single spot we went, there were kids. They were getting soaked in fountains spread out around the city, playing impromptu catch in the park with dad’s pair of slippers, and learning what happens to microwaved aluminum foil in the science center. Everywhere we went.

On a whole, it wasn’t a glamorous vacation, nothing like cocktails on a rooftop, but it’s exactly what I loved about it. We enjoyed such simple things. Like walking down pretty red brick sidewalks and watching dogs play in the park. We swung on giant swings. We bought a bag of grapes for a dollar from the farmers market and got to snack on them for the rest of the day. Actually, there’s also some really great seafood, stand-outs being their lobster rolls and oysters. You could call that a bit splurge-y, but otherwise, it felt almost like I was any regular resident there, just enjoying a nice weekend after a long work week.

Day 1 Itinerary

• 7:30am – Amtrak arrives 30min early
• 7:45am – Drop off bags at hotel
• 8:10am – Haymarket (farmers market)
• 8:20am – Boston Public Market (indoor food market) and Union Square Donuts (inside)
• 9:00am – Museum of Science
• 1:00pm – Put names down at Neptune Oyster (it’s a 2.5hr wait!)
• 1:15pm – Modern Pastry for cannolis
• 1:30pm – Quincy Market (food hall), Faneuil Hall Marketplace (shopping)
• 2:45pm – Check into hotel
• 3:30pm – Neptune Oysters for lunch, yes… at 3:30pm
• 5:00pm – Beacon Hill (beautiful neighborhood, boutique stores)
• 5:45pm – Boston Public Garden (park)
• 6:30pm – Omni Parker House for Boston cream pie
• 7:00pm – Nap at hotel (accidentally sleep past sunset at Bunker Hill Monument)
• 10:30pm – Island Creek Oyster Bar for dinner
• 11:30pm – Head back to hotel

The first thing we did after settling in was make a quick stop at the Haymarket. The Haymarket is an open air market dating back almost 300 years. After all this time, it is still offering dirt cheap prices. We got a bag of grapes for a single dollar, then really splurged and decided to also get three blood oranges for another dollar.

After securing our loot, we walked a few steps into the building literally next door, the Boston Public Market. It’s the type with more artisanal foods and goods, but not extremely so, and so not priced too extremely either. Inside, the one thing we made sure to try was Union Square Donuts. While I protested because I really didn’t need all this sugar to start my day, it was just so good. Victor says it was probably his favorite donut ever. I took back what I said about not wanting much of it and definitely asked to take back my fair share.

We visited the Museum of Science because it would help fill up our day. Timing worked out in that it would also hide us from the hottest part of the day. At a base price o $29 plus 2 add-on shows of $6 each, a ticket came out to $41, which is a standard price for this kind of thing but not exactly made for a low-budget day. A section of the engineering wing touted MIT inventions. I should have expected that. The exhibits were mostly geared for children. They could not keep my boyfriend’s attention for long. The IMAX theater was an impressive setup for a 50min. documentary we watched about the coral reef. The planetarium show was a bit less impressive, although it’s not fair to say since we fell asleep for half of it due to exhaustion. My favorite part of the museum was the live presentation of “The Great Homo sapiens Debate”. What an enthusiastic presenter and I was made aware of so many fascinating questions in this space. Were there actually many different species of us or just one species that adapted to different regions? And how do we figure it out when our samples are just like.. one cheek bone to represent two thousand years of people? The Lightning demonstration was runner-up for its cool factor.

Starving, we made our way to Neptune Oysters for lunch. When we arrived at 1pm, I was told the wait would be two and a half hours. Her handy paper was filled with these tidy lines of names and numbers written in small font, two columns. She flipped the paper onto the back to reveal more, writing my name in the second column on the back. I reported back to Victor this record-breaking wait time and he didn’t even bat an eye. “Cool, so let’s walk around a bit until then?” “What, so you mean we’re waiting?”

To curb the hunger, we had dessert first at Modern Pasty, a place known for their cannolis. We aren’t big cannoli people, but we gave it a try. Objectively, I think it was made really well, a hearty crispy shell with so much filling inside; and ricotta was a nice choice, subtle yet different. However, all said, we are still not cannoli people.

2.5 hrs is a long time to kill so the original schedule became way out of whack. We pivoted the plan and went to check out Quincy Market. Right outside the market there are street performers drawing large crowds and tired-looking men sitting in chairs in the heat, making balloon animals come to life in a matter of seconds for the children. Stepping inside the market, it’s even livelier. Down both sides of this hall are vendors selling a wide array of foods, from the obvious clam chowder, to the less expected American-Chinese food. There are sections so crowded you have to wiggle through. This market is part of the larger Faneuil Hall Marketplace, an open area with restaurants and shops to duck into, for clothes or just their air-conditioning.

After checking into the hotel, it was finally time for lunch at Neptune Oysters, yes lunch at 3:30pm. Victor read online that they had arguably the best lobster rolls in town, but you’d pay a premium, about 50% more than the price of arguably the next best lobster rolls in town. It was about $30 a sandwich. I’ll let you read his more in-depth review of how it was, but spoiler alert: buttery, tender lobsters are delicious.

To walk off all the food we ate, we went around the charming neighborhood of Beacon Hill. I’d compare the vibe here to that of Brooklyn, but slightly more upscale with all its boutique stores, but then again I don’t know Brooklyn that well. We continued our journey to Boston Public Garden. Cute dogs!! There was one who would chase her own tail every time she remembered it was there, which was about every 5min. The owner said when they got her, they were told she’d eventually grow out of it; six years later, she did not. The park was nice but I’m sorry, all I remember about it was the dogs.

Walked off that food yet? No? That’s okay. It’s time to buy a Boston Creme Pie at Omni Parker House, the originators of this pie (more like a cake). This place is actually not a bakery, but a really royal looking hotel which our guide the next day said was like the oldest something hotel in something. Boston is just too full of claims to fame by having the oldest something that I lost track of all the details.

By this point, we have been out and about for almost 12 hours now! Time for a nap at the hotel. A long nap, a get up and decide to go back to sleep kind of nap. An OH NO we missed the sunset spot kind of nap. But let’s not bring back memories of that sad moment. If you get the chance, visit the Bunker Hill Monument at sunset. It will make my boyfriend very jealous.

What are we going to do until our dinner reservation now… we Netflix I guess.

Ok! Time for dinner at Island Creek Oyster Bar!  It was fun sampling a small variety of different oysters that we had our waitress select. I do like oysters, but me and oysters are like me and wine, what do you mean this oyster is nutty? Victor commented it felt like a girls night out kind of spot. Drinks and oysters. No drinks for us though. But yeah, I could see it.

Day 2 Itinerary

• 11:15am – Snooze until this hour heh
• 12:30pm – Yankee Lobster for lunch
• 1:00pm – Lawn on D (lawn with random activities)
• 1:30pm – Union Oyster House for snack
• 3:00pm – Mapparium at the library
• 3:30pm – Newbury Street (shopping)
• 4:30pm – The Freedom Trail walking tour
• 6:15pm – Penang Malaysian Cuisine for dinner
• 7:15pm – KO Catering and Pies for snack
• 7:45pm – Sunset at East Boston Piers Park
• 8:45pm – Pick up bags from hotel
• 9:30pm – Train home

The effects of a red eye always last longer than we think. We slept in the next day.

To kick off our second day, we had lunch at Yankee Lobster, the next best place in town for lobster rolls, so says the internet, according to Victor. For a significantly cheaper price and very minimal wait time, this is probably the more practical place to get your lobster rolls. The most noticeable difference for me between the lobster rolls here and the other place we tried, was that at this place, the lobsters were much more meatier and less tender. It had the texture of say, biting into large shrimp. I like it as well. The other one feels more premium, but it all depends on what you’re looking for. I think if I lived here, I’d come to this one far more often.

We didn’t spend too long at the Lawn on D, but I could see it being a nice place to chill with friends if it weren’t so freaking hot. It’s as described, a big lawn, but more than that. Well-maintained and gated off but free entry. Inside there are stylishly designed swings, big chess boards, big Jenga, ping pong tables, and a big tent area for purchasing food and drinks.

We then had a 1:30pm reservation at Union Oyster House, the oldest, continuously run restaurant in the country. I tried reading about its history in the gift shop as we waited for our table, but there’s a lot. The parts I picked up were that it used to be where the Massachusetts Spy newspaper was published, and the future king of France lived here at one point. Eventually it was a series of long-running restaurants that changed ownership a few times, and famous people like John F. Kennedy and Meryl Streep dined in here. All that said, the our oysters and clam chowder were good but not great, but our server was so sweet, busily rushing back and forth but getting in a quick chat with her customers when she can. At another table, there was a well-behaved little girl in a high chair quietly eating food off her placemat, except for the parts where she nonchalantly picked up some pieces to drop to the ground, or smash all over her hands. Come to think of it, this place was a lot of what I took away from Boston, all in one place: really old history, seafood, cheerful people, and kids everywhere.

Afterwards I learned we were going to the library. Strange, but it’ll be for something pretty unique, a Mapparium room it turned out. You walk inside a big glass globe and see our world laid out without any distortions, in a way that a 2D map is unable to represent. There are also really interesting acoustics at play in a room like that, fun to experience. It’s $6 for adults and the tour lasts 20min.

The most enjoyable shopping experience I feel is on Newbury Street. It’s a beautiful street to walk on, even if you’re not looking to buy anything and just in it for a stroll. The first section had a lot of popular brands, a lot which was clothing. Partway through, the layout changed and it started looking more like residential brick apartments, yet each one had a sign to let you know it was actually a shop inside. All along the street, there were also stands to sell and promote more things. It was a bustling, yet classy street.

By chance, walking to the end actually brought us right to where The Freedom Trail walking tour started. Boston is so full of history, and this tour was our way to explore that history. We of course covered the Boston Massacre (which totally did not go down as a massacre in reality), as well as the Boston Tea Party, but there were definitely many more little gems in Boston than I expected. For example, we walked past and heard about the oldest government building in the states, the burial site of Samuel Adams, a building that used to be big enough to hold 1/3 of the residents of Boston, where they used to meet to discuss the tea tax by the way, and my favorite, a building that began as the oldest library in the states, but what is now… Chipotle. We had in fact, walked past many of these areas exploring on our own already, but we’d never have known how much significance was all around us.

We went to Penang Malaysian Cuisine in Chinatown for dinner. I wasn’t expecting a Chinatown in Boston but I guess every city has one. The thing to get here is the Roti Canai, always love the roti. We also got a standard but homey noodle dish. Given my roots, I was very happy to have a chance to eat some Malaysian food because it’s not that common for some reason.

We didn’t fill up too much so we could also order a meat pie to go from KO Catering and Pies. We got to go because it’s located super close to East Boston Piers Park, a nice place to see the skyline, watch the sun set, and enjoy a meat pie. After the sun went down, we grabbed our bags from the hotel and took a train home.

From our two days there, Boston looked like a happy city, and people seemed content going about their lives. A lot of cities have this quality probably, even in many that we’ve visited, but in the ones we’ve lived in, it definitely feels the opposite. The cities I live, we are all busy trying to be someone, trying to get somewhere. While none of this is grounded in facts and I’m pulling this out of absolutely nowhere, this characteristic that Boston has is what makes me fall in love with a place the most, maybe it just makes me feel at home.