Uptown Girl

Friday 6/10/11

Jeff went to classes all morning and during his noon break we walked through the Public Garden which was full of people. There were many groups of children on field trips and lots of festivities happening all around. The swan boats were busy today.

We walked up Charles St. to Beacon Hill which is a very affluent area of town. It has such a quaint atmosphere since it has retained its character from its original days. We loved the Federal style row houses and hilly streets full of shops and restaurants.

We ate lunch at a trendy little pizza place called Figs. It's known for the unusual variety of thin crusted brick oven pizza and we loved ours. You can tell it's a favorite place among the locals, and by that, I mean the Beacon Hill locals. Always a good sign when the locals pile in.

After lunch, Jeff headed back to the hotel for an afternoon of classes and I piddled up and down Charles Street poking in various shops, spending nothing by the way. 

Then I headed across town, passing the Massachusetts State House...

I went in King's Chapel...

And the adjacent burial grounds dating back to 1630... 

I ended up at Caffe Graffiti for the three hour North End Market Tour. Suffice it to say this tour deserves its own post which I will add to the end of this one, so don't miss it. Such a fun thing to do. 'Nuff said for now.

While on the tour, I learned that the Italian immigrants were so poor that their row houses did not have bathrooms, so they all bathed in this communal bath house. Men and women bathed on separate days and it was a community gathering spot. This was eventually converted into a community center.

Interesting fact: The houses with the copper (turned greenish/blue) 

were the first ones built with bathrooms.

After my amazing tour, I walked back to the hotel via Quincy Market, Downtown and the Theater District, and ended up walking through Granary Burying Ground in a corner of the Boston Common as the sun was setting. The list of notable burials there is quite impressive.

I didn't get back to the hotel until 7pm and we had to be at the big convention dinner at 7:30. After a quick change into our nice clothes, we headed to the party that was much like a wedding reception. We sat with another couple (Jeff knows the man and we just met his wife) and although it was hard to hear over the loud band, it was fun to get acquainted with new people. The four of us decided to leave the party early and go down the street to a place called Finale where we had champagne and creme brulee on the patio. What a great way to end our stay in fun Boston.

And, in case you wondered how my feet could handle crossing the city twice today, 

I wore my new OluKai flip flops and there was not one peep from my bunion.