Some memories of Boston

[annathepiper]

And now, for the sake of doing something besides playing Spider Solitaire, here now are some things I want to remember about Boston and Somerville. I want to get them down before they fuzz out of my head--and for the sake of recording something else about the Worldcon trip. I got kind of scattered posting to LJ ever since coming back. But here, now, in no particular order, are assorted scattered impressions of Boston.

Like Toronto and Philadelphia, Boston gave me a strong impression of Huge City That Goes On Forever and Ever. This is, I expect, mostly an artifact of it being flat--it has the room for urban sprawl. Seattle, on the other hand, is geographically constrained; there just aren't that many directions in which the city can expand. Part of it, also, may be that I have seen Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia, and Toronto all from great heights: the upper floors of hotels, the CN Tower, the Space Needle. There are other cities I've been to where I haven't had that opportunity, such as San Francisco or Honolulu or Portland.

Somerville stood out for me not because of any break in the urban landscape, but rather, for the nature of that urban landscape changing. There are old buildings in Somerville, with old streets along which I could almost imagine horse-drawn carriages travelling. And I liked how it was this interconnected series of Squares, clusters of shops and restaurants between which you could travel, and there didn't seem to be too much distance between them.

I'd never travelled on a subway before, so the T was a first. It was not entirely different from travelling on the monorail in Seattle, at least in terms of the feel of the interior of the cars. Outside, of course, it was completely different: being underground or on the ground the whole time, going a lot farther, and carrying a lot more passengers. I wasn't so keen on the high numbers of passengers part. For me, it was a matter of either having to stand up (and making my back cranky), or sitting down and being squeezed in amongst strangers. One really big guy squeezed into the seat next to me on one of our T trips and was pressed up against my side for the duration of his ride. It wasn't like I could tell him to back off, either, because there wasn't anywhere he could go. Intellectually I can see the value of the T for commuting purposes, but I'm pretty sure it would start driving me bats after a while if I had to ride it during high commute hours.

The trees are different on the east coast than they are on the west one. I'm not good at identifying specific types of trees (past "deciduous" and "conifer"), but I have this strong visual memory of tall trees with far-spreading branches along the streets of Somerville, especially on lyonesse's street. Here in Seattle and surrounding areas (I need to remember I don't actually live within Seattle proper anymore), I'm used to seeing trees that usually have more height than breadth.

Driving in Boston seems to be a nightmare. I didn't have to do it, but riding around the streets of Boston with tabithaclayton and solarbird gave me a front row seat to what it was like. Apparently, Boston driving has a reputation; this has been mentioned to me more than once now. Heck, my chiropractor even mentioned it to me on one of my recent appointments with her. Lots of aggressive, "every other driver on the roads is an obstacle between me and where I want to go" sorts of driving; I'm not good at that, either. So I think that'd make me settle for taking the T during commute hours, just to stay off the roads.

The MFA is wonderful: huge and full of art from all over the world. I particularly enjoyed walking through some of their Egyptian exhibit and seeing actual examples of things that get mentioned all over Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody books. Just as cool, and in an entirely different fashion, were the examples of "reserve heads" that same exhibit had on display; apparently these were likenesses of deceased persons, buried along with them in their tombs to serve as places for their spirits to reside in case a mummy got damaged or some such. Dara and I both kept thing of Kryten's sets of Spare Heads in Red Dwarf. ;)

Andor, Vicka's house, is huge and purple on the outside and colorful and eclectic on the inside. It was great to see mamishka's murals in person. Other things I liked about Andor: the stack of bathrooms, the porch up on the third floor, Vicka's cats and dog, the overall feel of three different houses stacked onto one another, rooms in the damndest places, and Rich playing the cello.

Vicka introduced Dara and me to sangria. We went out for meals twice, once to a Mexican sort of place where we had sangria blanc (which was very good), and once to a more Spanish sort of place where we had a red version of sangria (which was also good, but not quite as much). The second excursion included kirkcudbright and pleasant conversation and foodstuffs were had by all. I fear I have lost the names of what we ate... but I have this half-focused memory of appetizer-ish sorts of dishes, all of which were very tasty, and shared amongst the table. The memory comes through in my brain as if painted by an Impressionist, just enough to give me the idea of candlelight and small quantities of tasty food and glasses of the red sangria.

Dara and I went to Tosci's and had ice cream. Vienna Finger Cookie is still an extraordinarily yummy flavor of ice cream, and goes pretty well with French Vanilla, too.

There was a huge Lord of the Rings exhibit going on at the local science museum; we didn't get a chance to see it, though Dara and I thought about it. But it turned out we didn't have the time, due to dallying too long at Andor before getting ourselves publically presentable. It would have taken too long to get there on the T and back. I'm kind of sorry we missed the exhibit, though.

It was very humid, and very muggy, and it rained a lot. Some of it was east coast style rain, heavier than it rains in Seattle. Some of it was closer to what has become familiar to me: lighter, mistier sorts of rain that almost reminded me of home, save for the humidity and mugginess that were never entirely dispelled by the precipitation.

We had a devil of a time getting a cab to come get us. Dara called for a cab to come pick us up, and it never showed; Dara called irritatedly in to try to find out what was going on, and the dispatcher told her that the driver was claiming to have found the house. But there was no cab in sight. They sent out another one to come get us; the driver suspected the first cab had had a rookie in it who didn't want to admit to being lost. That's all well and good, but really annoying when you're trying to get to an airport to catch a plane.

But we did get to the airport on time. And going through the security at the Boston airport was a lot more laid back than going through the security in Seattle, surprisingly.

Comments

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

aw, now I want to come visit too!

(I know I know, why DON'T I, esp since I'd be more ok with the dog. money, time, vacation, prolly still kind of scared of planes. maybe some other time though?)

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

any time you like, my dear :)

[annathepiper]

Planes are scary! Though for me, the whole process of actually getting on the plane is more annoying. Once I'm actually ON IT, I can just read a book. :)