Ok, let's start with a discussion about Boston traffic and drivers. Obviously there was no central plan when deciding where to put roads in this city. It is just spaghetti everywhere. I turned off the voice prompts on my GPS system pretty soon after I bought the car. I found them unnecessary, since the display shows the map of where to go. However, sometimes the display is a little ambiguous, the arrow not being clear as to which branch to take if there are multiple options. Here in Boston, I've had to request the system to give me the voice prompts more in 24 hours than I have had to since I bought the car. I don't know how anyone ever got around this city before GPSes. Then there are the drivers. Now, I am a good driver. I know everyone says that, but I know it's true for me. I'm very aware of everything going on around me and have an eye on the crazy things other drivers might do. I have quick reaction skills if necessary and I am a good judge of rate of speed vs distance. I also have this annoying tendency to follow the law. Crazy, right? Well, it seems a lot of people here don't have that problem. Left turn only lanes apparently mean that you can also go straight and cut in front of other drivers. Rotaries (I know them as roundabouts) are completely chaotic. I'm never sure if they are supposed to be one lane or two. Since there are no markings, people just make up whatever they want. Craziness. But I've survived driving around so far. Parking is also either really expensive in garages or completely unavailable on the street, but I guess that's just a symptom of a large city.
I started today with a trip to the JFK Presidential Library. I actually found this library a little lacking. There didn't seem to be a lot of "stuff" out on display - everything seemed much sparser than the other libraries. I wanted more information about his personal life - kids, brothers & sisters, etc. There was lots of information about the Cuban Missile Crisis, about which I know very little. Also, very little about the assassination - just a black hallway with 5 televisions showing a 2 minute clip of news footage from the day. If you're interested in learning about the assassination at all, the LBJ museum has much more information presented about it.
I left the JFK museum and drove over to the Sam Adams Brewery. Apparently, the actual brewing floor was being cleaned, and so the tour went straight to the tasting room, where we got tastes of 3 different Sam Adams beers, all good in my opinion, and we learned about tasting beer, which is basically the same as tasting wine.
Then I drove over to Newton and went to the Jackson homestead and Historic Newton Museum. The Jackson homestead was a stop on the underground railroad. It was kind of interesting, but not enough to hold my interest for long, so I didn't stay too long.
I drove over to Cambridge and went to a cheese shop that I had heard was good, and boy was it packed full of stuff - cheese, produce, jams, jellies, charcuterie, meats, all of my favorite things. I picked up some fresh mozzarella (yay! I've been craving this for weeks) and soprasseta.
After a much needed nap, I met a cruise friend for dinner at Hungry Mother, a farm-to-table restaurant in Cambridge. I had some amazing gnocchi and his catfish was really yummy too! We spent a good 3 1/2 hours there talking and catching up. Good food, good wine, good conversation - a great night.
Tomorrow - more Boston! I'll be outside much more, so let's hope it's not as hot as it's been.
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