Friday, Chuck, Saori and I went to Davis square northwest of Harvard and we had a drink and dinner at this amazing cheapish counter service Italian place. The menu board had easily 100 items, and they served all kinds of draft beer. I ordered a new item, the seafood canneloni ($13) and cranning my head around to the handles on the beer taps, ordered a "Hooker". Hooker turned out to be a variety of light beer served with large chunks of watermelon floating on top, which added a heavy watermelon flavor to the top portion of the beer. Interesting. Not quite my favorite. The canneloni was delicious, however. The draft beer came in three different sizes, and the 'medium' was a heady draft, more than enough for the pre-dinner, during dinner- and after dinner drink.
Saturday, Saori and I went shopping in the 'Pru' mall. I got a pair of light canvas slip ons from Aldo, and then Saori and I went down to the Haymarket fruit and vegitable market. This is a market that one of Saori's coworkers described as "Panamanian" in that its a dense market of people shoulder to shoulder, plywood slab tables overflowing with fruits and vegitables, vendors shouting and arguing, cash waving in the air, all under the tarp canopies. Great prices, perhaps half of the supermarket tickets. I got four oranges for a dollar, and Saori picked up a bag of cherries.
We ate lunch at a middle eastern place with AlJazeera on the tube and delicious falafel pita wraps, right off the marketplace. Just a tiny, hole in the wall place, where the vendor addressed me as "my friend!" and the other clientelle were mostly Turkish, Arabic and north Africans.
Prior to heading to the market, we'd bought tickets for one of the famous "Duck" tours of Boston. These are tours of the city in open topped former amphibious assault vehicles, which drive you around the city and then drive right into the Charles river and become boats which cruise around giving you a view of the city from a completely different vantage point.
It's kind of an expensive tour at $27 for students, but we really wanted to do it and we picked up a ticket for Chuck so we could all go together. Heading back towards the Pru in the back bay where the tours leave, we ran into Chuck on the metro, which was quite shocking. I saw him first and then said loudly "mind if I sit here?" before proceeding to sit in his lap in an effort to flabbergast Saori until she saw who it was.
The Duck tours are campy, cheesy, but actually quite fun and informative if you can get through the stale jokes that every duckload of tourists must get through. As it started to pour rain as we drove away in the Duck, ours was not a happy boatload of tourists, although the "doctor McQuack" who was driving our duck could not be more cheerful and enthusiastic. Actually all the "conDUCKtors" have to adopt character identities, but at least they don't have to refer back to it or stay in character during the trip. Anyway, they drove us around Boston, talking about the city and its history and the geomorphology, with a few bad jokes thrown in, and then the highlight of the trip was actually driving the duck into the Charles river and cruising around to get a different view of the city. It was still raining, but it was really fun to be on a boat in the river, getting the low aquatic view of the back bay, MIT, and the science center.
After our duck adventure ended 80 minutes later, we ended up walking along Newbury street with Chuck, and having a lavish dinner of tapas, sangria, and paella. It would have actually been very reasonably priced if we had stuck to simply splitting the paella (which was more than enough for three people) and limiting ourselves to one glass of sangria (especially at $9 a glass). It was a very pleasurable evening, and Saori and I actually ended up walking home since we were actually quite close. (Actually, everything in Boston is quite close, especially when your reference city is Phoenix, Arizona.)
Sunday, we had a lazy morning of lounging and using the free wifi of the rec center next door, before we set out and did a little shopping. An unusual museum, the old waterworks of the city of Boston, caught my eye and we set out to the reservoir to the east of the city, easily accessible by two green lines. This turned out to surprisingly interesting. The reservioir, pumps, and pump house had all been built in the early 20th century, and the pump house was made to look like a large country estate or church, dressed in granite and elaborately carved sandstone. Behind the facade was a huge space three stories tall to the roof and extending two levels below ground. This was the pump room. There were three massive steam engine pumps which filled the space, extending in age from 1887 through the early 20th century. Beautiful, massive engines with giant flywheels, shafts, and piping. It's a steampunk wet dream, and the visitor experience was very well done with small monitors showing the pumps in action and diagramming how the water and steam moved through the complex machinery.
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