Since I love food (probably too much as my belly can attest), Spain has long been high on my list of countries that I wanted to visit. One of the reasons that The Wife and I had been procrastinating in going is that we don't speak Spanish. We had been hoping that the Spanish classes that The Kids were taking in school would allow them to be fluent. Nope. An hour of Rosetta Stone on the computer made me just as fluent as them in Spanish--meaning none of us could complete a sentence. Another event that dampened my enthusiasm for visiting Spain was the closing of El Bulli in 2011. There was no need to rush to see Spain if the temple of modernist cuisine was no longer open.
Spain had been an afterthought until The Wife stumbled on a really good deal on airfare. It would be during the Christmas holiday which is off-season in Spain. I was fine with that because I wanted to avoid the 100+ °F summertime temperatures that often occur in southern Spain. The only catch was that the flights would leave out of Boston, 1,300 miles from where we live. To keep this trip economical, The Wife also found a good deal on a flight to Boston. We would have to drive three hours to get to Nashville where the flight would originate, but it would save us several hundreds of dollars. We would also have to stay in Boston overnight. Since they hadn't traveled to Spain before, we also invited The Father-In-Law and The Mother-In-Law to accompany us on this trip.
Our journey to Boston via Nashville went as planned, and we arrived at Logan Airport in the early afternoon. I had lived in the Boston area for four years during college, but had not been back in the last 20 years. When I took a step outside and was met by a blast of the the frigid New England air, I remembered why. It was a typical winter day there, with temperatures in the low 20's °F.
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| 28-3 |
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| For convenience sake, we reserved a room at the Hilton Boston Logan Airport, which is about a 10 minute walk from the airport. |
Despite the cold, we weren't going to let an opportunity to do some sightseeing go to waste. Boston was the catalyst for the American Revolutionary War. We wouldn't have time to walk the Freedom Trail, but we wanted to find an interesting educational activity for The Kids. We bundled up in our warm winter clothes and hailed the airport shuttle bus which took us to the T station. From there, we took the subway to South Station and walked several blocks until we arrived at the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum.
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| The Eleanor and the Beaver, replica tea ships from the 18th century, are docked at the museum. |
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| The Kids pose next to the statue of Samuel Adams--failed businessman, tax collector, maltster, and leader of a seditious mob. |
It was already late afternoon when we arrived, but we were able to buy tickets for the last tour of the day. An actor dressed in colonial garb led us into a replica of the Old South Meeting House.
On December 16, 1773, a band of miscreant colonialists convened at the assembly hall and conspired to destroy the sweet, succulent tea that was carried on East India Company cargo ships docked in the harbor. This mob of disaffected British colonialists had been angry for years at the tax levied from the Townshend Revenue Act of 1767. The Tea Act of 1773 which gave the East India Company the ability to import tea at a lower cost than smuggled Dutch tea was the final straw for these rabble-rousers.
Each of us were given a card with the identity and biography of a real person who had attended that meeting 244 years previously. We recognized none of their names. The actors then proceeded to reenact some of the speeches that the colonialists made arguing against allowing the tea to be unloaded into Boston.
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| Fie! Fie! Down with Governor Hutchinson! |
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| The Wife and The Kids prepare to dump chests of tea into Boston harbor. |
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| The Girl failed in her attempts at steering us to warmer waters. |
I was surprised to learn from our guide that the Sons of Liberty worked all throughout the night destroying the tea. There were 342 heavy chests of tea and each one needed to be hacked open and the tea dispersed into the water. As onerous and time-consuming as the job was, it's impressive that it was done in the middle of December. As I froze my butt off on deck despite wearing thermal underwear and a down coat, the colonialists were merely disguised as Indians.
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| The tour also brought us down into the cramped interiors of the merchant brig. Imagine being a crew member having to spend weeks crossing the Atlantic in the cold and tight quarters of this ship, only to have your valuable cargo destroyed by your customers. |
We disembarked from the ships and gladly went back inside the warm building where the next part of the tour focused on the aftereffects of the Boston Tea Party. Holographic and cinematic technology educate visitors on Britain's heavy-handed response to the incident which incited the remainder of the colonialists to declare independence. On display is also one of only two remaining chests that was salvaged from the Boston harbor on that fateful day. The tour concluded at a gift shop and a small cafe where visitors could enjoy a warm cup of...tea.
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| There's no way Hamilton gets a bobble-head if there weren't renewed interests in his life from the popular musical. |
It was dark and really cold outside by the time our museum tour had concluded. We walked around the neighborhood in a fruitless search to find a decent seafood restaurant for dinner. We stumbled upon a place called the Barking Crab. It didn't get great reviews on Yelp, but we were pretty desperate to find someplace warm to sit down. And there were plenty of patrons inside already, so we figured it was worth a try. Bad decision.
The food and service were mediocre. This was disappointing as we had expected to get good seafood in New England. To make matters worse it was also expensive (pretty much everything in Boston is pricey).
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| The hot crab dip was the best dish we had. |
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| Lobster corn fritters with maple syrup |
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| Lobster mac and cheese |
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| New England clam chowder |
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| Lobster roll |
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| Traditional New England clam bake |
*****
Saturday, December 16, 2017
Our flight to Spain was not leaving until the afternoon, so we had the morning available to see a little more of the city. Unfortunately, The Boy woke up complaining of nausea and stomach cramps. Perhaps, the clambake that he had the night before didn't quite agree with him. Like the nurturing parents that we are, The Wife and I told him to suck it up and get dressed. Chinatown was calling and it was saying "Dim Sum."
Many of the restaurants that I used to patronize when I lived in Cambridge had long closed. The Wife wanted to try Hei La Moon which turned out to be a pretty good choice. She was, however, disappointed that they didn't have her favorite dim sum dish, lo bak go (daikon radish cakes), which is a usual mainstay of most places. The Boy spent an inordinate amount of time in the restaurant's restroom, breaking the unwritten rule of never using a bathroom in Chinatown lest you want to contract hepatitis. I don't know or want to know what went on in there, but he felt much better afterwards.
After that meal, we wandered around Chinatown trying different bubble teas and stuffing our already-full bellies with Hong-Kong style egg waffles. Eventually, we headed back to our hotel, picked up our luggage and checked in for our flight. While we waited to board, I did notice how much nicer and more modern Logan Airport looks compared to how it was twenty years ago. I guess when terrorists use your crappy airport as a staging ground for one of the worst events in American history, then it only makes sense for you to beef up your security and decor.
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