Boston

Jeremy qualified for his annual "All-American" work trip, and this year it was to Boston.  We had never been there before so we were excited to go.  We made poor mom drive us to the airport at 4:30am on July 12th (thanks mom!) and we were off.  Our Marriott was real close to everything, so that was neat;  we could walk basically everywhere.  Here was the view from our room. 

After checking into our room, we decided to take a walk exploring the city a little.  A few blocks away we got caught in a horrible rain storm.  It was pretty crazy but actually quite funny.  We ran from the pizza shop to the nearest CVS and bought an umbrella.  My wonderful husband let me have it;  he didn't care about getting soaked!  I was already pretty soaked by that point, too, but didn't really enjoy the rain pounding on my head and running down my face!  It is impossible to walk in wet flip-flops, so I carried those and ran back to our hotel room barefoot.   

From there we decided to take a cab to Fenway Park (we could've walked but didn't know that at the time) and did the tour of the field.  It was really interesting and neat to see the green monster, press box, etc.   We would be coming back there for a game on Thursday, but it was fun to see it without all the people there. 

What would a trip to Boston be without seafood?  I can take seafood or leave it, but Jer is a huge fan.  His district manager Bernie treated us all to a really nice dinner at "Skipjacks" the first night, which was delicious.  Here is Jer with his 2 lb baked/stuffed lobster.  He also had the chance to have some Boston "Chowda" and Lobster Bisque throughout the week and said they were great. 

The next day we decided to be the ambitious tourists and walk the "Freedom Trail."  Basically this is a 3+ mile walk through the city with various historical sites along the way.  The funniest thing is that there's actually a red line all through the city marking the trail. 

Since we walked from our hotel to the beginning of the freedom trail, we walked through the Boston Public Garden.  This is the site for the famous children's book "Make Way for Ducklings", which my mom had bought for Emily when she was a baby. 

Here are just a handful of pictures from along the Freedom Trail. 

We did the tour of the USS Constitution, which was really interesting.  It's hard to imagine the conditions the men (they were actually very young boys) endured inside the ship, like what they ate (bread so hard it would break the teeth of rats) and how they slept (hammocks that hung so close together, they would be touching.)

Ok, enough of the Freedom Trail, now that you are probably bored to death.  On a more positive note, oh wait, I mean negative note, there was the Whale Watching cruise.  Do I look miserable in this picture?  Well, I was.  The first mistake was that I had a tanktop on, way too cold out on the water.  The second mistake was that. . .  how do I even make a list?  The first mistake was that I signed us up to go on this!  No, just kidding, Jeremy actually had a really fun time.  We can laugh about it now.  The main problem was that I was cold from not bringing a sweatshirt along (it was stifling hot on land that morning), and therefore I went inside/underneath on the boat.  That usually makes a person seasick, even though I took a Dramamine.  I never threw up but felt really bad.  If you want to hear a funnier version of the story, just give Jeremy a call.  :)  Oh, did we see any whales?  I was too sick to watch for many, but I did see a couple under the surface of the water, and some blow holes spouting water.  And Jer saw several tails above the water.   I was just anxiously awaiting the 4 hours to end!  Luckily we shared the experience with about 8 other friends, so it made for some good laughs, if nothing else!

After eating lunch and buying a sweatshirt, we walked up to the Garden, where the Celtics play.  We also stopped in several neat restaurants/bars around town.  One was called the Union Oyster House, which was the oldest restaurant in America.

On our final day there, we got to go to a Boston Red Sox game.  Jer is a big Red Sox fan and had never been to a game there.  This also happened to be the day of our 10-year anniversary.  We had a really fun day together.   Here is a picture of a cute sign we saw near the stadium. 

Our seats were right behind Pesky's Pole, if you've ever heard of that. 

Fenway has a really fun atmosphere, and although the Red Sox lost, we had a great night. 

We flew home the next day, and the girls were so happy to see us.  And we were so excited to see them.  They had a great week with grandma, though.  If you want to see more pics of their time with grandma, click on my mom's blog (Margaret Traudt) at the right.  She has some great pictures on there.  They've seen more sites around the Twin Cities with my mom in a month than they've seen with me in a lifetime!