Epic Vacation Part 1: Boston

Yesterday, I commenced an epically long, solo vacation. I'll never have the time or probably the money to go on a vacation like this again, so I'm trying to take full advantage of the opportunity to go to a lot of places and see a lot of things. I'm going to try to blog about it somewhat regularly, depending on how good my Internet connection in Europe will be. My itinerary? Boston, Massachusetts; Ireland; England; Germany; Austria; and Washington, D.C.

I arrived in Boston yesterday morning after a red-eye flight with a brief stop in the JFK airport. I flew JetBlue, which I had never done before. I recommend it. I had a very nice flight attendant named Victor who said he liked my bag and gave me two cans of tomato juice. (I always drink tomato juice on airplanes but almost never at any other time.) He also bought a movie for the guy next to me to watch. Victor was so great.

After eating a breakfast of toast and jam, the first thing I did in Boston was take a nap. Then, I went to a baby shower for my friend Sarah (I'm staying here in Boston with Sarah and her husband, Michael). After the baby shower, I had another nap. In the evening, we went to dinner at Antojito's, a Mexican/El Salvadorian restaurant. We got a ton of food so I had a bit of everything: papusas, tacos, gorditas, some fish, rice and beans. Yum.

After that, we went grocery shopping. I learned that out here in Boston, they call grocery carts "carriages." We watched about half of Bringing Up Baby (during which I had another nap!) and then went to bed. I was so tired.

This morning, I went to church at the Boston Longfellow Park 2nd Ward with my friend Patrick. It's a ward that's pretty full of graduate students. I enjoyed how many of them tied their different fields of study into what we were talking about in Sunday School. No but really. I did. During the fifth Sunday combined meeting, we also were given chocolate and crayons and we had story time. I loved this ward.  Church was followed by a munch-and-mingle with the Longfellow Park 1st Ward where I saw my friend Natalie. Apples and celery and peanut butter were served. (I'll probably be chronicling the food I eat more than anything else I do while I'm traveling.)

This afternoon, we tried to go to Boston Commons and Boston Public Gardens (where the Make Way for Ducklings statues are!), but we experienced a lot of authentic Boston traffic and we couldn't find parking, so we ended up just kind of driving around for nearly an hour. I enjoyed it though. There are a lot of awesome old houses and old buildings here in Boston. We passed by John Kerry's house and a house that Louisa May Alcott may or may not have lived in.

On the way back, we stopped at the Fenway Stadium and walked around outside of it. It's pretty small, but it's a 100 years old and that's cool. I took some pictures that I'll have to upload when I have access to a computer with a SD card drive.

Long story short, I've been in Boston for two days and have seen mostly nothing. But I'm enjoying myself. Tomorrow, I'm going to Harvard Square, Harvard campus, and the Mt. Auburn's Cemetery where a bunch of famous people are buried. Tuesday is Walden Pond and Orchard House! Should be awesome. I'll keep you all posted.