Monday, August 17, 2009

Shipping Up...er, down...to Boston

Having learned through the grapevine that our friend Seamus' girlfriend, Emily, was visiting friends in Boston a mere hour and a half's drive away from us, we decided to take a little roadtrip yesterday. The plan was to drive out to Walden Pond, to live simply, to go confidently in the direction of our dreams! Mostly just to go for a swim and escape this 90 degree weather coupled with heinous humidity...

It turns out, unfortunately, that the Walden Pond park only allows a certain number of people at once, and only at certain times of the day--one of which we had just missed. We had to live more complicatedly, after that.

Not really, though. We lunched with Emily and some of her friends, and some of their friends, at an amazing Indian restaurant called Mela in the "trendy West End," as they called it. The food was delicious--probably the only buffet-style restaurant where the food was actually quality. Afterward, the group split up and we walked around Boston for a while with Emily, Armando, and Brian. We took the metro to the wharf, and saw the Old State House (where the Declaration of Independence was first read to Bostonians) and generally enjoyed the old architecture and non-grid format of the streets. Hopping on a ferry, we traveled 20 minutes to Spectacle Island in the harbour (ha-bah, if you're from Boston). It's now a national park, but it used to be a garbage dump! There's a really cool mural made of sea glass that was from the dump--did you know Noxema used to come in a blue glass jar? Mostly we just swam in the waters, though, and then laid in the sun and took pictures of the Boston skyline:
After taking the ferry back to Boston, it was already pretty late and Ian and I both had job interviews this morning. We headed back to New Hampshire, which felt sad. After spending the entire day in the company of others in a big city, it felt odd to head home to an empty apartment in a town a third the size of Bellingham. In the car ride home, I told Ian that I had had a good time that day, that, in the words of Luna Lovegood in the 5th Harry Potter, "it was like having friends." I can't wait for school to start!

On a happier note, I've finally uploaded some photos--I've been deleting old Europe albums to make room on my Picasa account. Here's the link: http://picasaweb.google.com/ashley.j.benson

2 comments:

Ian D said...

Wow. We just blogged at almost the same time and posted first paragraphs that are nearly identical (with the exception of one Thoreau joke). We must be stopped.

Chelsea said...

I like that reading your blogs is like two versions of the same story. It's like looking at your matching blond hair...