Visitors Round 2

A few weekends ago, Jason and Alan visited over my 3-day weekend. This forced me to perfect the Boston itinerary a bit since I had to come up with a schedule that was beyond a day. As expected, a large part of the trip revolved around food, but I think everyone had a good time! They got in late Friday night, so on Saturday morning we went out for brunch/lunch at Zoe's - probably the Cambridge equivalent of Kerbey Lane. After quite a wait for a table, I got this omelet with cream cheese, smoked salmon, and asparagus - quite tasty. Alan ordered the gingerbread French toast in lieu of the sweet potato pancakes; too bad since the French toast was a little disappointing, and a classmate later told me the sweet potato pancakes were her favorite. Afterwards, we walked around Harvard Yard for a bit and took some photos including this once in front of the library steps. We then headed out to Downtown and walked around the city towards Fanueil Hall and Quincy Market. We also checked out the Bell in Hand, the pub where Paul Revere once hung out at, which unfortunately, at first I had confused with another bar. But we figured it out in time to take a photo with the correct pub. We then went over to the North End and had canolis and hot cocoa for a snack before walking along Beacon Hill and visiting the famed Cheers location. Exhausted from a long day of touring, we went back to take a break. For dinner we went to Bartley's for some tasty burgers and then met up some of my classmates hanging out at some BU bars.

Sunday, we met up Tiffany, one of the youth at ACC Alan and Jason knew back in the day, and then went to Cornerstone church. Along the way, we stopped at J.P. Licks, the Boston equivalent of Amy's. Although, I think their stand-alone flavors are better. Blasphemy, you conjecture? But seriously, so good. I had coffee oreo and cow tracks, which had a great balance of sweet cream ice cream with peanut butter cups and fudge. So good!!!

We then headed over to Fenway before heading back to the North End for dinner at Giacomo's.


We decided to stop by Mike's Pastry's once again for some more canolis and Boston Cream Pie. Now that I've had both Modern and Mike's Pastry, I think the canolis are better at Modern but the Boston Cream Pie at Mike's is amazing.

Early Monday morning, Alan left for NYC so Jason and I went to Chinatown for lunch. There's this place called Gourmet Dumpling House which makes these delicious xiao long bao, but they're not really that xiao as evidenced by the photo. I have had better, but these are pretty darn good since they have the soup inside of them. Mmm. :)

Sam Adam's Brewery

Last week, some people from my section went to the Sam Adams' Brewery. Since it seemed like a Boston kind of thing to do, I decided to go and get out of Cambridge which rarely happens. It ended up being a pretty interesting affair.

We arrived a little before 2:00 pm hoping to get in the 2:00 tour. However, they were full until 3:30. With the prospect of 1.5 hours to kill, I was hoping we would to go to the nearby cafe and hang out, especially since it was raining and cold. But someone decided it would be fun to walk about 25 minutes to the closest bar so that we could get a drink. For most of the group, this turned into 2 rounds in under 30 minutes, where some people had more than 2 to help others finish their drinks. We trekked back to the brewery to make it for the 3:30 tour. It seems that the earlier alcohol consumption may have released some inhibitions, and one particular classmate kept on asking questions during the tour which made it pretty interesting.

I was somewhat embarrassed by it but laughed nonetheless. At least I got a souvenir mug out of it! Here are some of my classmates at the tasting.

I also got to see Wicked last Wednesday - a great way to celebrate the end of mid-terms. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. I'm into musicals, and it's been a while since I've seen something that I thought was REALLY REALLY good. The storyline is clever and the music is good too. One cool thing was that my classmate that organized the trip to see the show used to work with the traveling production company for Rent. So after the show we got to meet the company managers and the actor that played the Wizard. I love the HBS hook-up!

More to come... Jason and Alan visit Boston!