Boston

Beantown brews

/ Greg / Leave a comment

Boston was a rushed trip. With a full slate of work activities and many of the city’s best craft breweries and craft beer bars a train ride away from the core of the city, I had to make due with some selective and time-efficient sampling. I got a good start by picking up six cans at The Urban Grape, an independent beer and wine store a ten minute walk from my Back Bay hotel. I got very lucky as these were all at least solid and interesting beers. Three were real standouts – the Devil’s Purse Kolsch (a style I’m really gravitating to lately as a result of this particular can), Whirpool’s American pale ale (the citrus, the crispness, the thoughts of summer it induced… perfect!) and the Lamplighter Cuppa (a British pale ale infused with coffee which sounds strange, but was a slice of alchemy) all made me very happy. What made me sad was the limited time and work responsibilities meant I wasn’t polishing off any of these cans in full. Pouring half of the Cuppa out almost brought a tear to my eye.

Hotel beers in Boston

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Remembering Ron Tugnutt

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I can’t think of the Boston Bruins without remembering what I think was the greatest game in NHL history. March 21, 1991. Ron Tugnutt of my Quebec Nordiques made 70 saves, including a point-blank glove save off of Ray Bourque late in overtime, to preserve a 3-3 tie against the Bruins in Boston. It was one of the few highlights of being a Quebec Nordiques fan before the team moved away and won the Stanley Cup in their first year in Denver. By and large, that means the NHL is dead to me. The one infrequent exception to this is when I’m visiting an NHL city and there’s a game on.

Back in November in Boston, I picked up a cheap ticket on the secondary market (I refuse to directly fund the NHL or any of its teams) and made my way to the rink to check out a Bruins game against Minnesota. Cheap ticket means an upper deck seat, but pre-game I settled into a couple of pricier vantage points to check out the TD Garden.

Bruins game in Boston

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Missing a taste of the sea

/ Greg / 1 Comment

All I could think about was “lobster roll”.

My trip to Boston in November for work didn’t allow much sightseeing time, but everyone has to eat, right? And since you have to eat, you may as well make good choices. As a landlocked Saskatonian, my eating plans whenever I get near a coast involve unholy amounts of seafood. And on the east coast, my mind turns to lobster, and in particular, lobster rolls.

You can imagine my glee when I discovered one of Boston’s best lobster rolls was a short two block walk from my hotel in the Back Bay. I strolled into Luke’s Lobster and after being momentarily distracted in noticing that their in-season crab was from New Brunswick (yea Atlantic Canada!), I ordered a lobster roll and with the tiny bit of restraint I had, took time to snap this picture of it in all its crustacean beauty…

Lobster roll at Luke's Lobster

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Favourite travel experiences of 2014

/ Greg / 1 Comment

As each year draws to a close, I like to think back on my travels and distill down my favourite memories and experiences.  It’s part simple reflection and an exercise in gratefulness for the past year.  It also helps to plan future trips as I continue to learn about what makes me happy and what I cherish in experiences.  As I was doing so this year, it became pretty evident that many of my favourite travel memories this year ended up revolving around food, wine and drink.   In no particular order, here are my ten favourite travel related experiences from 2014:

1. Drinking on the roof of a church – And not just any church… I shared a couple of shots of liquor on top of St. Peter’s Bascilica in Rome with six German women.  Better than the liquor were the laughs shared and the feeling of cheating a lightening bolt for such behaviour.

Enjoying a drink on top of St. Peter's

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Looking back on 2014

/ Greg / Leave a comment

By just about any measure, this past year was an interesting one for travels and exploration.  It was a bit of a grab bag of locations and for a good part of the year, I was packing my bags about every month en route out of Halifax.   Here’s a quick look back at how I accumulated a few more passport stamps, some frequent flier miles, but most importantly, some great memories.

Toronto – Two separate trips to a place that feels like a home away from home let me experience some new restaurants, finally see my first Leafs game, and take in part of a Blue Jays home stand with my Dad.  Of all the great memories, sitting with Dad and swapping stories over a few Steam Whistle pilsners is what I’ll remember most.

With Dad at Jays game

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The Garden and the Common

/ Greg / 1 Comment

Boston felt a lot like my hometown of Halifax.   That familiar feeling was strongest for me in two downtown parks – the Public Garden and the Boston Common.    Here at home, we have two very similar parks in name and appearance, even if they’re both somewhat smaller in size.   About an hour or so after first landing in Boston, my wife and I walked through the Public Garden and immediately felt at home as it has something strikingly in common with its namesake in Halifax: an abundance of friendly ducks:

Boston Public Garden

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Exploring Boston’s North End

/ Greg / 2 Comments

After spending a morning walking through Boston’s urban park, the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, it left us just across the street from the city’s famed North End.   There are many attractions in this area, the oldest residential neighbourhood of Boston.  It’s well known for its Italian American population (which means outstanding food and drink!) and it’s also a great area for some picturesque urban exploring:

Boston's north end

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Where once a highway stood

/ Greg / 1 Comment

When Boston went through their “Big Dig” project to bury highways cutting through the core of the city, they had a great idea for some of the above ground land that would be freed up.   Instead of building up an already densely populated area, the city converted the reclaimed space to a varied and beautiful park, the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, that snakes along the path of the former John F Fitzgerald Expressway.

On what can only be described as a perfect Sunday morning back in July, my wife and I took the subway to South Station and started exploring the Greenway from its southern tip.   I’m a city dweller, an unabashed fan of big cities and I’m particularly fond of the beauty in the interplay of an urban cityscape and parkland.  There’s no shortage of this along the Greenway:

Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway

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A summer night at Fenway

/ Greg / 3 Comments

This has been a great baseball year for me.  At the time of visiting Boston in July, I had already been to a Cubs game, White Sox game, and three Blue Jays games.  All of those were incredibly fun, but I think I saved the best for last for my first visit to Fenway to see a Red Sox game.  I’m a baseball fan and will always go to a game if I’m visiting a city during its team’s home stand, but seeing a game at Fenway is something particularly special that I had wanted to do for a long, long time.

On a very humid July evening, my wife and I arrived at Fenway to get inside as early as possible.  Lots of others had the same idea:

Waiting outside Fenway Park

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