Also, Pat doesn't like having his photo posted up online. I had some good ones, too... phooey. :(
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Pru and Heru's Trip to New England 2009
From Sept. 18th to the 26th, Prutig (aka Pat... or honeybun) and I spent quality time with his family. Since this was a vacation, there had to be tourism along the way. The tourist spot of choice: Massachusetts! Salem and Boston, to be more specific. Here's some tweaked excerpts from my logbook about that visit:
9-20-09
We got up early, but still left a little late because Pat's OCD told him he left something in the house when he really didn't. Traveling along in the backseat of the car, we fell asleep and ended up feeling nauseous once we got into Salem. Thankfully, it was a very mild case of car sickness and we got over it quickly. We headed for the Salem Witch Museum, but stopped first at the statue of Roger Conant, the first settler of Salem.
Pat thought he looked a lot like Solomon Kane.
At the Witch Museum, we had to wait half an hour until the next tour started. Before we ever came to Salem, I had a notion that there would be tacky gift shops selling figurines of people burning at the stake. Thankfully the gift shop had nothing like that, but there was definitely a lot of goofy, kitschy witch stuff. We got a couple of shirts as souvenirs and played around with some of the merch.
Our tour began and we were warned to refrain from taking pictures or video of the demonstration. We walked into a large, dimly lit room with benches all around and a huge red circle with names in it glowing on the floor. Once everyone was seated the room went dark and a pre-recorded voice started telling the tale of the Salem witch trials. As the story went along, parts of the wall were illuminated to show the mannequins posed for the scene. It felt like a Hammer horror field trip in that it was trying to be serious and dramatic but looked so fake... yet entertaining nonetheless. ;D The second part of the tour was more informational of the history and evolution of witches and the Wiccan religion. Apparently it wasn't until 2004 that the last of the accused during the witch trials had their names cleared. :/ There was also a wall-spanning diagram of how witch hunts are formed and used the communist scare, the WWII Japanese internment camps, and anti-homosexual agenda as examples.
The tour ended and we headed out for another tourist spot: the Peabody Essex Museum. We spent a few hours there looking around the Yin Yu Tang house and the following exhibits. The displayed shoes for foot-bound women made me cringe (as I have size 11W shoes-- 9 1/2 in men's) and the documentary about traditional Chinese weddings was... interesting. :o Poor piggie.
Our guts started rumbling around that time, so we went to Capt.'s Waterfront restaurant for lunch. It's a pretty decent place to eat, I guess. Expensive, but still tasty.
For dessert, we walked down Derby Street to Captain Dusty's Ice Cream shop. We didn't know what we were getting in to. Once I saw the word "MALTS" emblazoned across the side of the building, I knew I had to have one. The chocolate malt they handed me was larger than I expected. Pat had ordered a small chocolate pistachio ice cream in a cone. Note, a SMALL cone. Good GOD, that thing looked like a mushroom cloud that came to a point at the bottom. Pat's folks walked out and onward as if nothing was wrong, but Pat was struggling to keep this mighty plateau of ice cream from falling to the pavement. In a rush to save the tasty treat, I gulped down a fifth of my malt so we could scoop the excess into my cup. It filled it to the top again. Time for a pit stop and a chance for my lactose-resistant digestive system to get situated. Feeling like the Michelin Man, we headed to... a candy store. Ye Olde Pepper Companie, to be exact. They had a lot of interesting things in there, but there was one item I absolutely could not pass up: gummy lighthouses. Yes, my fondness for gummy candies played a part, but the main clencher was that the gummies themselves looked rather phallic. ;) Oh yeah, I can be pervy-minded too.
We went back to the Peabody Essex Museum in hopes of seeing the rest of the exhibit, but they just closed. Instead, we checked out another part of the museum where they had a lot of paintings, sculpture, and a whole sea-themed section featuring boat models (including an immense and highly detailed model of the Queen Elizabeth), paintings, beautiful figure heads, and an old atlas that had sea monsters illustrated in the oceans.
Before heading off to the hotel in Boston, we walked around and enjoyed the lovely New England architecture. Man, I wish I could have stayed around and made life study sketches.
...Oh, and there was a village idiot on a bicycle singing as loudly and off-key as possible. Good times.
We nearly got lost trying to find the hotel in Boston, but we made it to the Back Bay Hotel just fine. Since I have never stayed in a hotel before, this was an excellent first time. The things that impressed me were the towel warmers, the phone next to the toilet, the umbrella and bathrobes in the closet, the big screen TV with select cable channels, and the tootsie roll-shaped pillows on the comfy beds. We spent a major part of the evening watching old boxing matches on ESPN Classic, including a young George Foreman getting rope-a-doped by Muhammad Ali.
9-21-09
Headed out early in the morning and stopped at Au Bon Pain for breakfast. A customer was asking me how to put the cups in the cardboard cup holder. ._.; She figured it out right after asking. Anyway, it's a good place to eat for breakfast if you're looking for a variety to choose from that includes healthier choices. Unfortunately I made the decision to try out the hazelnut coffee when I should have kept in mind my inability to process caffeine. For a quicker way to get across town, we opted to go on the subway. Have you ever seen a newbie board a subway for the very first time? I'm assuming it looks funny, since I was the one stumbling backwards when the train lurched forward. At our destination, we walked around for some time trying to find the Super Duck Tours, but couldn't find it. We followed along the freedom trail instead and took a look inside the Paul Revere house. I had to go to the bathroom at the time, so we were cracking jokes about using the chamber pot in the display. Further down the road we stopped at an old cemetery that supposedly had the grave of Cotton Mather. We didn't find the tombstone since hanging around in a cemetery for an hour or two didn't sit well with the folks.
After walking around some more, taking tourist photo ops for ourselves, asking some directional questions, and even more walking, we found the Science Museum where the duck tours were. We had a half an hour until the next tour started, so we popped in for a bite to eat. Pat's mom pointed out a guy wearing bright purple clothes, an afro wig, and platform boots. We snarked a little, I must admit. The (half) hour finally arrived and we were boarded onto the DUKW vehicles, but not before they had us pose for a snapshot. Everyone was seated and we were waiting for the driver to arrive. We see that same man with the afro and purple clothes boarding... and taking his seat behind the wheel. Pat's mom was amusingly surprised, and so were we. Danny Disco was his name, and we were going for a ride on the Old Gloria for some humor-laced sightseeing. It was pretty neat puttering around in the bay and having some of the passengers take a crack at driving the DUKW, but the purr of the boat and the sound of the waves put Pat to sleep. We arrived back at the museum, and I instinctively took what was handed to me... the $20 souvenir photo package. I gave it back, but we changed our minds and decided to get it anyway.
Another ride on the subway took us to the Government Center stop and we looked around for a place to eat-- not that it's difficult to find a restaurant or anything. Wagamama won the decision and had a table outside. It was such a beautiful day, we couldn't pass it up. What struck me as being cool was when the waitress was taking our order, she wasn't writing it on a little paper pad but instead writing the order numbers onto the table with chalk! Man, I wish that system was implemented for more restaurants! Another first experience for me: eating edamame (steamed and salted soybeans still in their pods). With our bellies full, we walked down the restaurant market/hallway (I think it's the Faneuil Hall Market Place) and easily resisted the temptations offered... with one exception. I spotted giant chocolate-covered macaroons, and I knew we had to get one for Pat. We took a long, hard walk back to the hotel, cutting through the park (Public Garden?) along the way. Back at the hotel I whacked my elbow on the metal knob on the room door. $#&*@#%!!! I watched some TV, Pat took a nap, we later finished off the Wakamama leftovers (and the macaroon; best friggin' macaroon ever!), watched more TV, then went to bed.
9-22-09
I slept in a little too much this morning and made us run late. Pat and I each had a large muffin and some Odwalla fruit drink while getting ready. We packed up our things and left it with the hotel so we could pick them up along with the car to go home later. After we walked out of the hotel though, I realized that I wanted to keep that booklet magazine in the room that had the ad for Dick's Last Resort. ^^; I shouldn't have made such a fuss, but it made me sad that I couldn't keep that ad. Through the day, we would speak with the hotel front desk and visit 2 Borders stores with no luck. (Note: I recently went through all the pamphlets and stuff from the trip, and found an ad in the Duck Tour's guide to Boston. Yay!)
We stopped in to look at Trinity Church and its beautiful stained glass windows. By this time I ran out of space on my camera. Chinatown was next, and Pat's mom seemed to be bitten by the bakery bug. At the first bakery, right off the bat I spotted delicious plump pork buns. We also got a couple of moon cakes, one with black bean paste, and some fried donut dough(??) that tasted like it was cooked in recycled old oil. Oh well, 2 out of 3 ain't bad. We stopped at a second bakery, but didn't get anything. We finally stopped in at 163 Vietnamese Sandwiches & Bubble Tea for some sandwiches to take home for later. Of course, I picked the place because I wanted to try some genuine bubble tea! Oh choices, choices! I picked the kiwi fruit shake with bubble that I would share with Pat. The shake was awesome, but the tapioca pearls were meh for taste yet fun to play with. With the muffin, juice, pork bun, fried donut cheeto thingies, and now bubble tea in our guts, we weren't too enthusiastic about grabbing lunch. Still, Pat's mom wanted to try out authentic New England clam chowder before leaving, and truthfully, so did I. We headed down to the Legal Sea Foods restaurant despite our less than willing desire to eat anything. I asked for a cup of chowder and edamame (wow, I'm an addict already?), but in the end I couldn't handle even that. Then again, that was a heaping pile of soybeans I got, plus I sampled some of Pat's food as well. The clam chowder wasn't what I expected, in a good way. I'm used to the super-salty cheap canned stuff. Fresh clam chowder is much more mellow, creamy... even almost sweet. One final subway ride and long walk to the hotel before heading home. Thanks to the nearby highway turnoff, we made it back home in 2 hours. Harvey (the fatty English Cocker Spaniel) was so happy to see us that he had to shake off goosebumps. :D
