Boston Day 2

Today did not get off to the greatest start.  I was super excited to go for a run in the morning.  So, I woke up, got ready, and went to the elevator.  As the doors closed, my nano iPod slipped out of my hand and to my dismay, bounced away from me and down the elevator shaft.  I stared in shock at the closing doors, not believing what just happened.  I immediately went to the hotel front desk and told them what happened.  They said they would call their engineer and try to find it.  They took my phone number and promised me a call.  I have not yet received said call.

Although I was seriously disappointed, I still got my run in and then Bri and I were off to meet up with my brother, Benji, and niece, Annie for a nice Boston breakfast at Red's Sandwiches in Salem.  Salem is great because they totally play up the whole witch hunt stuff.  It's really fun! Red's was super awesome as well.  Benji knows good food!  We had amazing omelets with awesome potatoes.  The people there are crazy friendly and you get the idea that everyone knows each other.  It was great.  Benj ordered a kid's pancake for Annie.  This is what we got:

Apparently, the "kid's" pancake is just a regular pancake order, but instead they just give you one pancake instead of THREE.  That's right, an order of pancakes gets you three of these massive guys.  It was crazy!

After breakfast, Bri and I headed to Roxbury for a tour of the Sam Adams Brewery.  The tour was super cute, totally free, and you get 3 free 7 oz beer tastings.  It was pretty fantastic and I'm not even a huge beer person.

Next, we went back to downtown Boston to take a stroll through the Boston Public Gardens.  It was so pretty here! We took a ride on the swan boats, some stranger got me a flower balloon, and we saw all the flowers, statues, and ducks! There were a crazy amount of ducks! Also, the book, Make Way for Duckings is based on this park and there is even a statue commemorating the book.  While here, we also saw the restaurant, Cheers, and took a walk down Charles street, an adorable neighborhood with tons of shops, and got ice cream at J.P. Lick's.  It was pretty fantastic.  And yes, we had beer and ice cream for lunch.

We had some time before dinner, but it was about to pour, so we walked back to the car and drove over to Fenway to see the baseball stadium.  After this, we also drove out to see the USS Constitution.  By this time, we had sat in enough traffic and walked through enough rain that we were totally ready for dinner.

We went to the North End for dinner.  This is an area of Boston that is supposed to be just like a little Italy kind of place.  We went to Giacomo's for dinner.  This place is small, quaint, and delicious.  We had to wait in a line outside to get a seat in the restaurant, but it was totally worth it.  We got a bottle of wine, split a caprese salad appetizer, Bri got eggplant parmesan, I got shrimp and scallops scampi, and we were crazy happy.  Also, it was all super reasonably priced.

After dinner, we walked down the street to Mike's pastry to get some famous cannoli.  The cannoli was ginormous and really yummy.  Overall, we were pleasantly stuffed, I was pretty tipsy, and it was time for us to head over to Benji's house, where we were staying for the night.