Boston is so pretty in the fall! Hubby and I visited about two weeks before the peak of autumn color, but the first week of October was still a great time to go: the air was crisp, and the smells of pumpkin and spice were wafting from every doorway!
On our first two days in town, we’d visited Beacon Hill and Faneuil Marketplace and taken a walking tour of the Freedom Trail.
On our third morning, we really enjoyed the Boston Tea Party Museum. It’s a must do! The museum is interactive with costumed characters leading the way. You just can’t stay detached from the action as you’re assigned a role to play and even a script for a few as your tour group reenacts the events of the day that led to the Boston Tea Party.
Following the excitement of throwing boxes of tea into the harbor, Hubby returned to his conference, and I journeyed on to the Boston Public Gardens. The day was too beautiful to be inside!
I planned to wander the grounds and take pictures, but a man playing his guitar stopped me in my tracks. I plopped down on the nearest bench, mesmerized by the sound of peaceful melodies for… about two hours.
I was also people and dog watching. A family trying to get a professional picture kept losing their little girl, who flitted and twirled to the music the guitarist played. It was a nearly perfect afternoon.
A 5K was in process next to the park to raise funds for children’s cancer research. Tufts University students were also staging a pro-Palestinian rally and creating a lot of racket on the beautiful day with blow horns, tambourines, drums, chants, etc. After hours of somewhat muted protesting, a host of them suddenly converged nearby and proceeded to drown out the guitarist, disrupt the completion of the 5K, and block the roads for the next several hours. I wonder if their parents knew about their Sunday plans.
In anticipation of our Boston trip a few weeks before, Hubby had reached out to the brother of a high school friend who lives there, and we were able to meet him and his wife for coffee after she finished the 5K. It’s a small world—the wife is from Slidell, Louisiana, and attended Southern Miss in Hattiesburg, MS. She’s close to my age, so I named a couple of people in my neighborhood who sport Southern Miss paraphernalia on their vehicles, and she actually knew one of them!
We were dining outside, and the sparrows were chiding us with dangerously close swoops of our heads and food the whole time. Eventually, I pushed our plate of crumbs to edge of the table where several dozen were in the hedges eying us with their beady black pirate eyes. Within seconds, the crumbs were gone.
Hubby and I realized the late hour and said goodbye. We had dinner plans with business associates! Though I desperately needed a change of clothes for the French restaurant, the Uber drivers couldn’t get to us due the protesters. We canceled several after realizing how large the gang of protesters had grown and resolutely started our walk to Deuxave.
With 20 minutes to spare, we spied a busy TJMaxx. I slipped in, selected some black suede booties to replace my tennis shoes, and found a pretty sweater to replace my outdoor-smelling T-shirt.
We arrived at our destination only a couple of minutes late, glad and relieved to have had a wardrobe change!
