This isn't all dining, but I just got back from a week vacation (half Boston / half Maine), and I wrote up a trip report for another forum which I thought I'd share. There's enough dining in it to make it relevant here, and I figure there's some chance somebody else stumbles across my post and gets some non-food advice benefit from it too.
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Arrived Sunday afternoon at the
Intercontinental Boston. Hotel is amazing, and in a real convenient part of town. Definitely wouldn’t pay the $300-$400 per night price tag unless it was on someone else’s tab, but it was well worth the $140/night Priceline price, and then some. $39/night to park a car in the city too, but that’s anywhere I guess.
Walked around the harbor and Quincy Market area that evening, and ended up in North End, which was really cool. It’s kinda similar to Baltimore’s Little Italy, though spread out over a much bigger area with way more options. They happened to be celebrating
Fisherman’s Feast in the North End that night, so it was more festive than usual. We went into some little Italian place for a makeshift happy hour (i.e. pound Sangria), and next thing we knew, some marching band enters the place and plays for about 10 minutes. It was part of that festival I think. Pretty neat:
Ended up at
G’Vannis for dinner that night, and hit up the tourist trap known as
Mike’s Pastry for dessert. Despite the lines full of out-of-towners in the place, it still hit the spot:
(Side note for the Boston people – Monday morning, we hit up this
Clover food truck outside our hotel for breakfast. Apparently they’re fairly new, they’re vegetarian, and there’s one near MIT and one in the Financial District. Had a great breakfast sandwich with a soft boiled egg, tomato, some sort of soft cheese, and salt and pepper on a wheat pita. It was $3, very good, and according to some blogs, these trucks seem to be developing a pretty loyal fan base. Try a meal at one of them if you happen to be by one of the locations.)
Monday morning, we did most of the
Freedom Trail. I assume most of you have at least heard of it, but it’s the walking tour through the city to see all the mostly Revolutionary War era historical stuff. I won’t bore you with those details, but one of the really neat aspects about Boston are how there are these 200+ year old sites all over the city, with modern office buildings less than a block away. Any nothing really seems out of place. Here are a few of the better pictures from the Freedom Trail:
Massachusetts State House
Granary Burying Ground
The North End – we were here again around lunchtime Monday as part of the Freedom Trail, and tried (guy from other forum’s) recommendation of Volle Nolle for lunch. Cool little neighborhood sandwich spot. I approve.
Thanks in part to the recommendations in this thread (my other board), we ate at
Toro (a tapas restaurant) that night. It happened to be restaurant week in Boston, so we did that deal - $32 apiece for two appetizer dishes, five “main course” dishes, and two dessert dishes. We ended up trying some great stuff – marinated oysters, braised beef short rib with prunes, crispy pork belly with leeks, escargots, and fava beans, etc. Unfortunately, most of my pictures here ended up blurry, but here is one that turned out the best, along with the Restaurant Week menu:
"Asado de Huesos" - Roasted bone marrow with radish citrus salad and oxtail marmalade
After wine, a couple of the “upgraded” dishes, an after dinner drink, tip, etc., we’re still looking at ~$150 for a “$32 apiece” meal, but well worth it. This meal was one of the highlights of the trip for me.
Tuesday was our last day in Boston - we spent the morning in Cambridge. I’d never been there before, so I wanted to see the area. It’s a cool college town. Had brunch at a diner called
Zoe’s. Pretty good, felt like it could have been near any college. Walked around Harvard for a bit, that campus is gorgeous:
We drove to Jamaica Plains for the Sam Adams Brewery Tour that afternoon. I'd have done Harpoon, but they only tour on the weekends.
And then went to the Red Sox game that night. Hit up
Cask’n Flagon before the game (a little too commercial-feeling for my taste, but it was fine. It had beer.) And we ended up seeing a
really great game for an unbiased observer (I torture myself as an Orioles fan.) It was a 6-0 Sox victory, including an incredible catch at the wall by Torii Hunter, a well-pitched game by Clay Buchholz, a homerun over the monster by Darnell McDonald that broke a car window, and a grand slam by Ryan Kalish. In the 5th inning, there was a marriage proposal on the scoreboard too, and it ended up being the couple sitting directly next to us. That was pretty neat. And normally I think those are really cheesy, but we were talking to the chick for the better part of the beginning of the game, and she was die-hard enough that it was perfect for them. Pictures from that night:
Wednesday morning, we made the ~5 hour drive up to Maine to spend some time on Mount Desert Island, which is home to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park. Is there a good thread on this forum to post a bunch of cool pictures from there? (They're not good enough for the photography thread.) Acadia is absolutely amazing.
Last edited by UMTerp; 08-22-2010 at 08:58 PM.