We are about to embark on the final leg of our journey that started back in 2005 when we left California and moved to England. My chronicle started here on this blog in 2007 when we bought a Cotswold cottage, became more sporadic during the eight months we spent in Berlin in 2011, then waned dramatically since arriving in Boston back in November. But now, in the final weeks before our return to Santa Monica (and before I get to add the final clause to the subtitle of this blog “…back to burritos and margaritas.”), I thought I should take a few moments to commend the most recent city that has hosted us. It’s no California, but it’s pretty fine as far as the east coast goes. As they say on American Idol, Boston, here are your best bits:
Favorite places to have a glass of wine
Bin 26 Enoteca
26 Charles St.
Boston, MA
(617) 723-5939
http://www.bin26.com/
With lots of wines sold by the carafe, the only drawback here is you have to order some food with your drink due to their licensing restrictions. Not that I am complaining about being forced to eat saffron risotto balls.
Beacon Hill Bistro
25 Charles St, Boston, MA
(617) 723-7575
http://www.beaconhillhotel.com/
Corner seats by the window are ideal for people watching on Charles Street and around the rest of the bar. Try the homemade fig-infused vodka. It reminded me of the flavoured gins so beloved in England.
La Voile
261 Newbury Street, Boston, MA
(617) 587-4200
http://lavoileboston.net/
Best place to stop if shopping on Newbury Street has worn you out. I am sucker for all things French, and the proprietor here does the double-cheek kiss thing.
 |
| Public Garden photo by Boston Photo Sphere from Flickr Creative Commons |
Taj Hotel
15 Arlington St, Boston, MA
(617) 536-5700
http://www.tajhotels.com/Luxury/City-Hotels/Taj-Boston-Boston/Overview.html
Old fashioned, excellent service and bar snacks, and a great view of the Public Garden.
Best Dose of Culture
The Institute of Contemporary Art
100 Northern Avenue
Boston, MA 02210
(617) 478-3100
http://www.icaboston.org/
Don’t miss the viewing room that overhangs the harbor. Try Sam’s restaurant (next door) if you are visiting the museum. Awesome food and views.
http://www.louisboston.com/sams/
 |
| Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum photo by me before docent reminded me No Pictures Allowed. |
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
280 The Fenway
Boston, MA 02115
(617) 566 1401
http://www.gardnermuseum.org/
What can I say? I like quirky women’s art collections, my other favorite being Peggy Guggenheim’s Venetian Palazzo. Here we have a real-life Boston-Venetian Palazzo. You won’t find any of Peggy’s surrealist buddies on display, but there is plenty else on offer and an excellent restaurant as well.
 |
| Photo of Boston Public Library in her Christmas finery by me |
Boston Public Library
700 Boylston St.
Boston, MA 02116
http://www.bpl.org/central/tours.htm
For a bit of Hogwarts here in the good old USA, hang out in the reading room of the McKim building (free wifi). Better yet, take a free art and architecture tour.
 |
| Barking Crab photo by Lars Ploughmann from Flickr Creative Commons |
Barking Crab
88 Sleeper St, Boston, MA 02210
(617) 426-2722
http://www.barkingcrab.com/
Classic New England seafood shack. Wood burning stove inside in winter, picnic tables underneath a crab-trap decorated tent outside for summer. Close to the ICA too.
75 Chestnut
75 Chestnut Street
Beacon Hill
Boston, MA 02108
(617) 227-2175
http://www.75chestnut.com/
Just off Charles Street, our trusty standby for post-work drinks and dinner. While you can spend $30 on a lobster, you can also have a bowl of chili or a turkey sandwich for considerably less. The same cannot be said of many of the places nearby on Charles Street, which are either very good but expensive (Bin 26 Enoteca, Toscano), overrated (The Paramount), or shockingly bad (Figs actually messes up pizza, Panificio loses orders, and Cafe Bella Vita is a waste of prime real estate).
Cantina Italiana
346 Hanover Street
Boston, MA
(617) 723-4577
http://cantinaitaliana.com/
Probably not the best in Little Italy, but solid enough and lovable for its old school kitsch and charm that starts with the neon sign outside of a basket of Chianti being poured into a wine glass. Skip dessert and stop by Mike’s Pastry just down the street for a cannoli (I favor the limoncello flavor) afterwards.
This morning I attended a book sale in the basement of the Boston Public Library. I was there by chance, having seen a listing for the sale in a neighbourhood newspaper over breakfast. I have been wanting to visit the library, and with husband out of town this was the perfect chance.
When I arrived at ten minutes to ten there were already twenty or so misfits loitering in the very grand lobby of the old McKim building waiting for the doors to the sale to open. (I know the architect’s name because after the book sale I geeked out even more and joined the library’s Saturday art and architecture tour.) The public library is not where the beautiful people hang out on a Saturday morning. We were a motley crew comprised of the elderly, the odd, and the possibly homeless, although winter clothing tends to make everyone look homeless. What we all had in common other than a love of books was sensible shoes. I was surrounded by the kind of people who wear running shoes with normal clothes and almost certainly never to run.
As if to tease us the first room of the sale was filled with romance novels. Dispensing with this genre at least partially explained the oxymoron of a public library holding a book sale. But why was T.S. Eliot on the poetry shelf in the next room, its spine still wearing a Dewey Decimal sticker and a manila pocket still intact on the inner back cover? I nabbed The Cocktail Party and moved on to the New England section.
Despite the sedate surroundings, there was a distinct air of frenzy mingled with aggression as bibliophiles jockeyed for prime position from which to survey the thousands of cast-offs on offer. A man sporting fresh-from-cataract-surgery-sunglasses and a red parka body blocked me from the Art shelf. A middle-aged woman pleaded with a peroxide-haired man to watch the stack of books she had selected from the rolling cart of Music titles. He shrugged as if to say that what she left behind was fair game. People carried plastic shopping baskets full of books or leaning tower of Pisa stacks. My final selection of three seemed downright modest in comparison.
I made sacrifices along the way. Larousse Gastronomique (only $10!) stayed put because it was too heavy to carry around for the rest of the day. A pang of guilt over promising husband I would not buy any more books gave me the strength to resist Confessions of a Prairie Bitch by the woman who played Nellie Olsen on Little House on the Prairie. I regret that one. In the end it was the Eliot plus a collection of essays on New England Life called Here at Eagle Pond and a book by Ludwig Bemelmans called La Bonne Table. (I bought the last because it had sweet line drawings and a chapter on the Tour d’Argent, only finding out after I got home and searched online that Bemelmans also wrote the Madeline books.) I am starting to make friends with my Kindle lately, but for $5 I got all three of these gems. How could I say no?
Last night husband and I went to see the Nutcracker. Husband had never seen it and enough years had passed since I had that we were both genuinely excited to be hoisting this holiday cliché upon ourselves. It started well enough. We were both impressed with the Boston Opera House, a vaudeville palace built in the 1920s in a style that apes the best of Euro-gaudy. It was only in the second act when Mother Gigone waddled out on the stage that things started to sour. In a ballet full of dainty, delicate things, Mother Gigone is a man in drag wearing a giant hoop skirt and walking on stilts. Clown children scamper in and out of his/her skirts from time to time, and this is where the trauma comes in. Long ago I too was a clown child.
It wasn’t supposed to be that way. I had different aspirations when as an awkward tween I auditioned for my local production of the Nutcracker. I had the good sense to realize that sugar plum fairydom was the preserve of older girls like Francesca, girls who had boobs, wore eyeshadow, and smoked Marlboro Lights between pointe and tap on Thursday nights. All I wanted was a modest role in the opening scene as one of the Christmas party kids hanging out with Clara and Fritz. Instead I got the indignity of clown child.
While I was busy suffering from my PTND, husband was busy enjoying himself. It turns out the Nutcracker is rife with British cultural references, including the 1970s Cadbury fruit and nut case ad and the inspiration for Keith Lemon’s Celebrity Juice Russian dance (you have to wait for it, but it does come around 1:30). In the end I found some consolation in the production, mostly in the fact that the role of reindeer-pulling-the-Snow-Queen-sled did not exist in my local production. I got over being hidden underneath a drag queen’s skirt, but I may never have recovered from a walk-on part in a white unitard and jingle bells.
With only two weeks to go in the Cotswolds, the move to Boston is starting to feel very real. The cottage has been rented, our temporary housing in Cambridge arranged, and all but five items on my thirty-five item strong “to do” list have been crossed off. (I am starting to find new ones though, like buying that box of mini-mince pies at Waitrose yesterday so we can have a bit of England in Boston come Christmas time.)
What remains ahead are movers and farewells. I have meetings in London on Tuesday, so we will say our goodbyes to the city then. I should be doing those things I somehow never got around to doing, like visiting the Soane Museum and walking around the dome of St. Paul’s, but instead I am pretty sure we will just have a coffee at Bar Italia, a glass of prosecco at Negozio Classica, and dinner at the Electric, all things we have done tens of times before. It is, after all, the routines that you miss.
In the Cotswolds I will say my goodbyes this way. I will ride my bike to Burford one more time, stopping for awhile at the point that looks like a Turner landscape painting right by the Windrush in Sherborne. I will get irritated at how long the line is at the Abbey Home Farm café near Ciren, but wait anyway for one more delicious vegetarian lunch. We will buy drinks for the regulars at the wine bar next Saturday and the next morning we will go to church, where I will join Dorothy in asking for good health for the queen in the prayers of penitence and, if I am lucky, we will sing a rousing rendition of Christ Triumphant Ever Reigning to the tune of Guiting Power. And then, on our very last day, we will partake in the British institution of Sunday roast with close friends. Like I said, it’s the routines you miss.