rudderless

Boston!

Where to start? We’re back from almost two weeks of vacation in New England. We were all looking forward to the trip, though I was admittedly a bit apprehensive about how the ladies would do with all the traveling and new people. Turns out I had nothing to worry about. Not one thing. They rolled through every stop, they reveled in their new friends, they loved the weather, the city, the country, the beach. It was grand. GRAND I tell you. And it was the ultimate motivation for getting aboard the boat. We miss our dear city of Boston. We cannot wait to get our hands dirty building in Maine. We have an application and contacts for getting our mooring in the Benjamin River, minutes from our soon-to-be-homestead. And best of all, we saw friends old and new who we look forward to getting back to. I said to John more than once, “I don’t want this to be my vacation, I want this to be my life.”

Gushing aside, we started in Boston and were blown away with the changes downtown. When we left four years ago, they were just starting to lay the Greenway over the now-submerged highway. It’s done and traffic patterns are so much more manageable. The North End is connected to the rest of the historic district. People were sunbathing on grass on top of I-93. Brilliant. We stayed in the Charlestown Navy Yard, a location I’d recommend to anyone, but especially to anyone with kids. There are restaurants and playgrounds steps away. We took the MBTA ferry (that John used to operate) to and from the waterfront. Once you’re parked in the cheap garage, there’s basically no reason to drive.

Our first day was our chance to play tourist and do the things we wouldn’t have done prior to kids. We started with Sophie’s first taxi ride, followed by her first T experience. We walked through Boston Common to the Public Garden, the nation’s first botanical garden. Sophie LOVES flowers. She was in heaven. The real ducks in the pond proved less inspiring than the bronze statues (”Statuas” as Sophie says) commemorating Robert McCloskey’s story, Make Way for Ducklings. Rosy fell madly in love with “Jack” and we had to pry her away so that other people could visit the mallards.

We hit up a playground, got a Finagle a Bagel (oh my) and walked to the waterfront. We were just crossing Northern Avenue to the wharf where John used to work when we looked to the left and spied a beautiful carousel on the new Greenway. Sophie had been asking for weeks to go on “a carousel with beautiful horses.” It was like this one fell out of the sky just for her. She was the only kid on it. Perfection.

We ferried home and rested, took a long walk through the Navy Yard, played in a playground for hours, and finished the day with our dear friend, Bobby, at our favorite pizzeria in the world. Santarpio’s is officially still the best pizza we’ve ever eaten. It was great to be home. It truly felt like home to us.

more tomorrow . . . .