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Durgin Park
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May. 1st, 2008 @ 07:12 am
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Tuesday evening I walked from my hotel in the Back Bay section of Boston over to the Quincy Market/Faneuil Hall area. It was drizzling and very very VERY windy; I can't tell you how many ruined, abandoned umbrellas I spotted lying around on sidewalks or dumped next to garbage cans. When I got to my destination, the Durgin Park restaurant at Quincy Market, it was CLOSED.
CLOSED I tell you.
Given that it was founded in 1827 and has been there through thick and thin, I didn't think they'd close for anything short of an ice age. But posted on their door was a sign informing one and all that they'd had to close due to a gas leak.
No kidding; I went around to the other side of the building and there was a huge hole in the sidewalk, a smell of rotten eggs like you wouldn't believe, and about a dozen police, fire, and utility vehicles all getting in one another's way as the workers around the hole tried to patch the leak.
 
 
I wound up walking from Quincy Market over to the North End and Little Italy and walked morosely around, pondering whether I felt like going in to one of the dozens of nice Italian restaurants in that part of town, but in the end, slightly damp and on my own with no one to eat with, I sighed, caught the subway at City Hall, and wound up getting soup and a sandwich at the Au Bon Pain in the Prudential Center, near my hotel. So much for my venture out into Boston culinary life.
Current Mood:  restless |
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Bahston
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Apr. 29th, 2008 @ 06:33 am
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I'm in Boston, back at our offices at 116 Huntington. Flew in yesterday. Annoyingly, there are no longer any any direct flights from Burlington to Boston.
When I started at IDX (before we were bought by GE) ten years ago there were two competing airlines, US Airways and Business Express (which got bought by Delta) that BOTH offered about eight flights daily to Boston, and they were always pretty full.
Post September 11th, we've generally only had one airline offering direct flights, and recently whichever airline had been doing it shrugged and said "oh, forget it, not worth our trouble." I don't know if the fuel prices have made it unprofitable for airlines to do Burlington-Boston flights. I do know that the passengers were there; the last time I flew the flight routinely they were always packed and people were waiting on the standby list.
So I flew Burlington-to-La Guardia on a tiny little US Airways prop plane that was just loads of fun to be on in a thunderstorm, then La Guardia-to-Boston on the US Airways shuttle. I would have gotten here far faster if I'd just driven, but I hate driving in Boston traffic. And I hate paying $48 a night for parking. Even if I can expense it. Sigh.
And then I realized that when I'd hastily packed on Sunday night that I hadn't packed a rain jacket. Meaning that a vigorous cross-Boston walk for 3-Day training purposes would have to be conducted in a short-sleeved t-shirt. Stupid me. I've packed for so many trips that once in a while I just plain forget something.
Then I had an idea. There's a great Eastern Mountain Sports store a block away from our office, on Boylston Avenue, and you can shop their website and then have them hold your order for you. I looked and found that they were having a sale on Techwick wicking shirts, so I ordered a couple long-sleeved, good for a brisk outdoor hike in chilly weather, and one short-sleeved (the sale was best if you bought three) and picked 'em up last night. Provided it's not pouring tonight I'll go out anyway.
Maybe I'll walk from the Marriott at Copley Place, where I'm staying, over to Faneuil Hall for dinner or something. Round-trip, that'd be a hair over four miles. I used to do that sort of thing all the time when I was in Boston but then it got old and I started doing a lot of "oh, maybe I'll do that tomorrow night." (And that's why I'm overweight these days.)
Current Mood: apathetic |
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Dinner last night
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Nov. 9th, 2007 @ 09:26 am
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Thanks to a recommendation from my students at the hospital, I had dinner last night an a Phoenix landmark, the Fry Bread House.
Very good food. 100% Tohono O'odham owned. (You may know the tribe as the Papago, but see this Wiki entry for why they don't use that name any more.)
I ate more than I should: I got an order of their red chile stew and an order of their green chile stew, each of which came with big tasty pieces of Indian fry bread, then to tamp it all down, two red chile tamales. Their tamales were a little odd -- corn husk, which I of course removed, then corn meal batter, then MORE corn husk, then more batter and then the tamale filling. I can't imagine eating the corn husk on a tamale (a shibboleth for detecting tourists is that they try to eat the corn husk) but having double layers like that made it a bit difficult to avoid. As for the stew, it was excellent; I'd have a very hard time saying which I liked better, the red or the green.
Tonight I'm going to try to meet up with my wife's aunt and uncle in Tempe and tomorrow morning, early, I fly home.
Current Mood:  full |
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Arizona Fall League
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Nov. 7th, 2007 @ 11:06 am
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I'm in Phoenix, Arizona. Been here since Sunday, and I fly home Saturday. I'm onsite at a customer, of course.
( Read more... )Current Mood:  blank |
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jayfurr's journal