Boston

I’ve wanted to see Boston for a long time. I thought the interest showed up after I graduated from LMU, but seeing as my Eyewitness Top Ten travel book is copyrighted for 2003, I guess I’ve been thinking about this trip for longer than that. I considered applying to Boston College and Boston University for graduate school, but chose not to because I wanted to student teach near my home town and be with my family.

When Joe and I started investigating trip itineraries for my spring break, they all

included a transatlantic flight and some very rushed visit to as many European cities or countries as we could jam into a 9-day period. I would leave from school, take a red-eye, and wake up someplace I’d never been. Joe would see Europe. We’d sprint through the cathedrals and museums and restaurants of a given city and then arrive home again, exhausted. But every itinerary I tried – Italy, Great Britain, Germany, Croatia, Scandinavia – just felt too short and too cursory. We’re not back-packing college students anymore. We don’t want just the tid-bits. We considered Vancouver. We considered Costa Rica. We kept coming up with something that just didn’t fit our ideal.

The decision maker was simple – I realized that I had a roundtrip ticket for a domestic airline that would expire in May. We had to use it and it had to be within the US. That’s it. Boston it is.

Neither Joe or I had ever been to this colonial history haven, but I had always had a desire to BE in Boston and once Joe realized how close we would be to Walden Pond, historical thinking spot for his literary idol Thoreau, he was completely on board.

Even more quickly than I had expected, I fell in love with this city. It’s big and cultural and historic and interesting. But it’s also manageable and clean and friendly. It feels markedly different from home in San Diego, but isn’t overwhelming like New York. There are a variety of neighborhoods, but the more we explored the different areas the easier it seemed to get from one area to another. Boston looks and feels like a big city, but the longer we were there the smaller it felt. It seems perfect.

We arrived on a slushy-rainy night but I didn’t care. I was enchanted. Our hotel, the Omni Parker House, originated the phrase “catch of the day,” developed the original Boston Cream Pie and Parker House Rolls, was the meeting place of The Saturday Club, and is the oldest continually working hotel in the United States. Plus it was beautiful! We had a view of King’s Chapel and the Old City Hall. In the distance we could see the new bridge. Just outside the entrance we could see the famous church where revolutionaries hung lanterns to warn that the British were coming – “One if by land, two if by sea.” This was enough to captivate me, but of course there was more.

Our first full day, a Saturday, we bought plums and blueberries at Fanueil Hall marketplace then took a train out to Concord and walked to Walden Pond. Joe was in heaven. We didn’t even care when it started to rain – the drops sounded so cool on the leaves around us and it felt like we had the whole area to ourselves.

On our second full day we took a bike tour with Urban Adventours. (If anyone reading this is ever going to Boston, I recommend this tour option.) Instead of walking a small part of the city or taking a bus, which can feel disengaged and unimaginative, we were able to cover the majority of the main city sites and get some exercise at the same time. We rode down streets that busses and cars couldn’t enter. We got to really see the city, be there, feel each individual site, read the plaques and take in the panoramic views. The breeze as we rode down Beacon Hill was cold but invigorating. We felt a little like we were getting a Boston most tourists never encounter.

Everything from that point on continually charmed me. I’ve been bewitched by Boston. We spent an afternoon reading in the Public Library and on the schedule of upcoming events I recognized two speakers and would have paid to see 2 more. Everywhere we went there was good food and Joe found good beers he couldn’t drink at home. There are about 6 universities within the stops on the T and apparently 160 more nearby. There is such a respect for education, literature, and history in the surrounding area that I can’t help but imagine what it would feel like to be here, in Boston, longer than a week or two.

This blog was started on the premise that I would be moving to London to teach for a year, so it shouldn’t really surprise anyone that while in Boston my head filled with “what if…” scenarios. What if I moved here for a year? What if I applied to graduate school here? What if Joe and I gave this a try, just for a short period? I think we could do it. The weather might be hard for us Californians, of course, but I could do it if I knew it was just one year. Could I handle being away from my family? Could I leave if I had the chance to renew my teaching contract at my current school? What if I just applied for teaching jobs in SoCal, grad schools in Boston, and just figured out a plan based on the results? What if? What if?

I imagine an entirely new and exciting version of myself would live in Boston.

For now, Joe and I left a few sites unseen with the promise that we would return to Boston again in the summer or fall sometime in the next few years.