Boston part 4 - baking and history

A lovely part of our Boston time was hanging out at home with loved ones. We had a particularly cosy evening making pasta and cupcakes (the latter in preparation for a birthday party). Only issue with baking before dinner is the temptation to snack on excellent cupcake mixture.

Maeve had the inspiration to make them epic chocolate. Vanilla is just a waste of space where chocolate should be.

We also played a whole heap of different games in the evenings. I particularly liked one called 'sounds like a plan', which is like Apples to Apples but in the form of advice. A task is laid out and you have to put in a piece of advice. The best one by far was 'how to date the most popular kid in school', where the winning card was 'don't even bother'. Too good.

In between family time, we did various touristy stuff. The above moment was a standout tourist moment. Not so much the food as Ellie making her home country proud. A sentence that was supposed to start with 'can you recommend a beer because...' somehow just became 'I'm Australian!' followed by confused polite silence from the waiter. Ellie is very proud of her nationality.

On another touristy day we were heading into town for a nice historical wander. Ellie just needed to do a quick detour to a makeup store, which natually resulted in this:

makeup is being applied, makeup is being browsed through, makeup is being bought.

An hour later we could continue on our way! Via Legal Seafoods because clam chowder is amazing (said the mostly vegetarian)

We then wandered as much of the Black Heritage trail as we could manage in the rain. It's an extension/cousin of the Freedom Trail, the main historical walk of Boston. This one takes you to a series of landmarks in the beautiful Beacon Hill neighbourhood that were part of the civil rights movement since Boston was founded. 

Window boxes were full of real wintry plants, very fancy

We then visited the Afro American History Museum which was small but interesting, and really seemed to focus on the common continuing threads of activism that remain part of daily life in the US. Old posters warning people not to interact with the police (in case they participate in catching escaped slaves) were particularly striking.

We also had a tour of the old meeting house which was a school, shelter and church at various times. It was made so much more special by our fellow tourists, two women from NYC with amazing local accents

Before the tour started they spent 10 minutes interrogating the admissions desk guy - 'we've walked a really long way, where should we go after this, is it going to stop raining? No we don't really want Italian food, can you recommend anything over the other side of town? Is the ambience as nice there as at the Italian place we don't want to go to? How are the prices? And how do we get there? No we don't want to walk, how much for a cab? Oh you'll print off a map? Thankyou, how nice! Thanks for looking up the menu of that restaurant, can you show us a menu for the one across the street? Now was that directly across the street?'

They were also astonished to learn that slavery had ever existed in Massachustus, or anywhere in the north. The tour guide did a nice job of throwing out contrasting facts - MA was the first state to ban slavery, but one of the last to legalize interractial marriage. The ending of legal slavery also marked a wave of people selling slaves to southern states while they still could. Despite this he commented that many people still try to remember northen slavery as 'benign' because more enslaved people learned to read and write. While still being slaves. And then getting sold instead of freed. So benign.

These updates are now massively behind schedule so I'm posting this and then starting another one pronto. Ellie may come back and add more story to this one later so keep an eye on that!

Boston part 3 - parks and candles

Some more updating! 

This was a couple days before Christmas (which we're working up to in update form). We wandered the very cold Boston Commons (good for trayning and cattle grazing, according to the info carved in stone) and admired the landscape.

This bridge is especially pretty and of course features in Make Way for Ducklings, a Boston classic.

The ducks also feature.

And their refuge island, which looks very well used.

Ellie would make an excellent duckling, particularly given her excellent individual navigation skills

Seen here riding sidesaddle very stylishly

We weren't game enough to go skating that day - too uncoordinated on solid ground!

We also went to the annual Hannukah party and sang many Hannukah carols, accompanied by an enthusiastic accordion player

Favourite non conventional Menorah

Favourite conventional

Squirrel!

Boston part 2 - baked goods

OK so we were blogging and then we lost track of it completely. We're gonna catch up, but not all in one go. For now I leave you with the belated fact that we ate amazing baked goods from a Brookline bakery called Clear Flour and it was excellent.

More updates to come as I get around to them!

Boston part one - epic jetlag, family time and museums

We are now settled into Boston and have adjusted to various things like miles, inches and the right side of the road. Not so much the road as the corridor, we keep having to dodge around confused looking people. Boston is one of our favourite cities a place we could both imagine living in. People say it is a lot like Melbourne, we don't quite see that but it is excellent. 

 Facing a large hotel in Boston looking a little cold! Standing outside the oldest public library in USA

Inside the Boston Library the walls and ceiling was amazing- all libraries should be this pretty.

More beautiful Library photos

(turtle lamp is also pretty but a little random)

After a day of sightseeing in which we got distracted by a beautiful library, tried to walk 3km that turned out to be 3 miles. This trek took us through some pretty shadey areas we both tried to melt into the background we saw three drug deals and walked through the back of china town and saw someone kill a chicken at the back of a restraunt. After walking for about 30 minutes we relised our mistake and hopped on the T and got to Harpoon Brewary which is a similar size to Little Creatures Brewary  there we were super late to meet Chloe from Canberra (because when Australians travel, we always find fellow Australians) for pretzels and beer.

 Beer Can Christmas Tree at Harpoon Brewary.

Chloe was staying with her dear friend Katii who was lovely and helpfully drove us back to our green line T to get home so we didn't have to trek back to the station. 

Then we headed out to the suburbs for an evening of a fairly specific Boston subculture - the international folk dance scene. It's a pretty cosy family like scene and  we remet many of Maeve's friends there, some of whom were pretty excited to be meeting real live Australians (and were even more excited to learn the term 'Aussie'). We both tried our hand at folk dancing -hard to get photos as we were moving pretty fast.

Dinner with the family at an american restruant called Not Your Average Joes an odd mix of American italian and Grill and seafood and burgers. For example Ebba had Spinich Canaloni with Sweet teriyaki sauce which she said was good in an american way. 

There was a whole lot of spinning and Ebba got super dizzy in this contra, much to the frustration of the more serious folk dancers around her! She was pretty good though!

Boga learned a new, rather complicated Greek dance in four similar yet not the same parts.

Today we went and wandered the galleries and yards of Harvard, and Boga took many pictures of squirrels.

so cute.

This one was munching something and looking particularly cute and fat. Ebba was really annoyed and thought Boga was being particulary touristy.

Boga took many photos of Ebba.

Ebba touching John Harvard's shoe for good luck

Ebbas responding photographic skills

This is Boga saying ' isn't the cold lovely' before she got really cold and slighty grumpy.

Ebba under a famous Harvard gate.

we then headed indoors (so warm! so good) to enjoy the three Harvard Art Museums rolled into one, which makes a pretty epic medly of all the art ever. You get ancient Greece, some Japanese landscapes, you turn a corner to find Picasso, Van Gogh and Monet. Makes for some excellent instant culture times.

some favourites:

We thought Peggy would like this one and the one below

Ebba's favourite

Painted by the Artist who painted The Kiss

Fantastic ancient buddhist art 

Ebba being a museum babe

After that we got distracted and put the camera away, partly because we got super hungry and headed off to Insomnia Cookies, a store that must heavily depend on college students. It opens till 3am every night and sells incredibly addictive cookies, as Ebba discovered during her stay at Yale. We had a modest amount and then doubled back to pick up dessert for everyone. So many cookies!

A wander in the Harvard bookshop (known as the Coop. As in for chickens) completed the day. 

Boga is obbsessed with Coop and it took serveral minutes of Ebba hearding to get her to leave the store after an hour or so

Door way at the Coop

serious merchandise Your very own Harvard Medical School Chair for your practice or home study

more serious merchandise. This is the Law school rocking chair. Guaranteed to make your baby a future Harvard lawyer.

Carollers in funny hats - they sung beautifully and made it feel like a proper cold christmas.

On the way home Boga ventured into Starbucks to try to order a semi decent coffee after some Internet research and ordered a triple shot no foam soy flat white. She said it almost resembled something close to coffee.  

Tomorrow is a quiet at home day with our lovely family folk, and possibly a Hanukah party. The day after we will  probably by a return to Harvard. Maybe we'll go searching for an attraction we overheard:

"Let's got see the secret library"

"Oh, where's that? I've never heard of it"

Yep they keep it pretty secret. Enjoying the cold and americianness but missing our lovely Aussies too.

Much Love Ebba and Boga

xxoo