Pictorial: Boston.

Hooray! This last weekend we had a whirlwind trip to Boston. We left our place at 4:15 am after our 3:45am wake up. We made our 6:30am flight, and arrive on time at 7:35-- 15 minutes early. By 9:00 we were at Laura's awesome apartment after a quick trip on the Boston T past ol' Boston University (Where Josh and Laura work! Well, kind of). Laura shares an apartment with Jacky, her coworker. Their place has so much character- nice molding, awesome brick building, cool kitchen and wood flooring, nice bathroom.... so great!

We met up with Josh and headed to brunch at the "best brunch place in Boston"- and it WAS great. I had some excellent huevos rancheros, Matt had some great eggs with some absolutely amazing bread and butter (I can't even describe this butter- it was awesome). After that we headed to the Sam Adams Brewery which was SO neat! We tasted the actual grains they use, sniffed the hops, and then got to taste 3 different beers in cool tasting glasses we got to keep. Woo!

After that we headed to Cambridge and walked around Harvard (BEAUTIFUL) and had burgers at a local fave. I had the Yuppy Burger (Burger, Boursin Cheese, Bacon, Ketchup, delicious bun....) and a great black and white shake. Mmm, lets forget I'm trying to be healthy these days (which you wouldn't know from all the bread I'm baking, but whatever....). After that Matt and I were pretty wiped out since we'd been up for QUITE a while at that point and wanted to live through the night, so we grabbed our bags from Laura's and checked into our hotel for a little nap.

After our nap we met up with Josh and Laura and went to a little Tapas bar (can't remember the name, woops). It was the first time for tapas for both me and Matthew so that was an adventure! We both LOVED the variety and options! Unfortunately we had forgotten our camera for the entire day until dinner.. so cue pictures! We promised ourselves we'd be back since obviously we couldn't see the whole city in 36 hours!

Josh and Laura! The will-be-married-in-93-(Ithink)-days happy couple!

And us! We have hard times taking pictures...

Managed to get those eyes open :)

The fab spread! Actually this is just the bread and pesto/bean/butter and then our sangria which was so fruity and delicious!

We had a great time (and TONS of food- try 9 different little dishes, all great! Except the weird chicken that was on special.... we should have known....)

After that we went to another place so Matthew could get a Guinness in Boston. Most places in the US get their Guinness from a Brewer in Canada. Boston gets it straight from ol' Ireland, plus you've got to drink Guinness in Boston, right? So we did!

This is Josh's Black and Tan- you can kind of see where the Guinness and Sam Adams separate just under the logo on the glass.

The next day we headed to church at CityLife Church of Boston which, happily, is a Redeemer plant! Redeemer is our church in New York (ours as in Josh, Laura, and mine, and essentially Matthew since if he had lived there he would have been a Redeemerite). I was pretty windy and cold, but it was a vast improvement over the snow and rain the day before.

Part of the Boston Common where we walked after church.

Aw.

There are a lot of really old cool graveyards in Boston.

Yay!

I don't know.

heh. You know that face!
Laura noticed that someone had probably just proposed at this little rotunda-- there were some red rose petals and tea lights left behind.

A mysterious little door.

Reading the engraving.

A beautiful street at the top of the Commons that I'm pretty sure is famous but I've forgotten the name now. It is pretty though!

Don't Dump! Drains to Charles River!

The capital! Matt was so psyched to see this- the entire time we were there he'd say "this was in the Departed", "that was in the Departed" heh.

Paul Revere!

Sorry this is crooked, I'm lazy. This is the very tower where ol' Pauley boy hung the lanterns!

The grave stones have such cool engravings. I wish I could remember some of what they said, they almost sound fake. They were cool.

The river! The old ship behind Matt is the USS Constellation-
the last wooden ship in the US Navy.

We stumbled upon a city toilet and had to give it a try. See here the screen says "Please choose the suitable position of the toilet bowl." The options were "left," "center," and "right."

Inserting 25 cents.

Instructions- you get 20 minutes. An alarm will sound at 20 minutes and the doors will open. You better get your business done on time!

Matt actually tried it first. After he came out the doors closed and we could hear it cleaning itself for like 3 minutes- it sounds and looks as thought it like steam cleans the whole thing or something like that. MUCH cleaner than your average public restroom, to be sure. Still not so clean that I'd want to use it, but probably actually a pretty good option if you're a menfolk.

And so, ridiculously, the last picture I took in boston was the inside of the toilet. We walked around all over the place and had a great lunch at a brewery that Josh and Laura love. We made it back to the airport, saw some drunk dudes get kicked off their flight, and then headed home. After finding our car in the incredibly high tech Baltimore Washington International Airport parking, we finally made it home around 12:15am on Monday- what a full day!

It was SO wonderful to see Josh and Laura and to have a little escape from our world here. Thank you SO much to Josh and Laura soon to be Mr. and Mrs. Ziesel -- you were fantastic tour guides and it was so wonderful to spend time with you both!