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| A quote attributed to Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840 - 1924) |
At the conclusion of
this year’s National Society of Newspaper Columnists (NSNC) annual conference
in Washington DC, my friend and former NSNC President, Suzette Standring,
invited me to spend four days with her and her lovely family near Boston,
Massachusetts.
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| Boston's Old State House (1713) |
Suzette and I checked
out of the Washington Plaza Hotel just before 6.30am Sunday morning and caught
a taxi to the airport. At 8.25am we boarded Jet Blue’s Embraer 190 jet for a
short one and a half hour flight up to Boston. Arriving in time to attend
Suzette’s regular Sunday morning church service at the Boston Church of Christ.
It was a beautiful
experience to sit with the eight hundred strong congregation as we sang hymns
and listened to the eloquent minister, Chip Mitchell, as he delivered his
weekly sermon.
That night Suzette and
her family, husband David, daughter Star, son-in-law Joe and granddaughters
Bella and Lulu took me to dinner at a local Vietnamese restaurant. Star’s
husband, Joe introduced me to a favourite Vietnamese dessert, the avocado
smoothie; a delicious blend of ripe avocado, ice, milk and sweetened condensed
milk. Known as “butter fruit” in Vietnam, avocados are used as a dessert
ingredient throughout Southeast Asia.
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| Consignment Shoppers 'R' Us |
Monday was the day
Suzette had assigned to consignment shopping, (the American version of op shop
shopping) after discovering we had a mutual love of finding pre-loved
treasures. What fun we had! By late afternoon we were modelling our new outfits
on Suzette and David’s back deck. I was particularly pleased with my skirt,
t-shirt, denim jacket and shoes that came to the princely sum of $21.50 and
Suzette found a beautiful designer evening coat for $45.
That evening, I
volunteered to cook dinner for the three of us and we sat out on the deck with
a glass of red wine each and enjoyed a meal of New Zealand lamb chops with
fresh mint sauce, oven roasted potatoes and green salad.
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| David, myself and Suzette enjoying our dinner on the deck |
Suzette’s adorable seventeen-year-old
dog, Mojo, a beagle/cocker spaniel cross, wandered happily between us and
successfully employed her beautiful soulful eyes to entice titbits from me.
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| Mojo the Adorable |
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| A Puritan Gravestone in the Granary Burying Ground |
The next day Suzette
and I caught the train into Boston and Suzette gave me a personal walking tour
of the city that was founded in 1630. We visited an ancient cemetery, the Granary Burying Ground (1660), with its
Puritan gravestones; walked through the Omni Parker Hotel where JFK announced
in January 1960, he would run for President and stopped to admire Faneuil Hall (1742),
where Samuel Adams and James Otis made speeches in the 1700s encouraging independence
from England.
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| Inside Faneuil Hall (1742) |
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| Coffee Merchants 'R' Us - Annie and Suzette inside Polcari's Coffee |
We walked down narrow
cobblestone streets in Boston’s Little Italy to enjoy a delicious lunch at
Antico Forno before calling in at Polcari’s Coffee and meeting the owners,
Bobby and Nicki.
Polcari’s Coffee is an
old world grocery store, brimming with rare coffees and spices from around the
world and still looking much the way I imagined it looked when it opened in
1932.
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| Polcari's Coffee (1932) |
On the way home we
popped into one of Boston’s most famous bakeries, Mike’s Pastry, to pick up a
treat for David. The decadent La Sfogliatella or Lobster Tail consists of layers of crusty baked pastry
filled with a rich custard cream.
Wednesday
was my final day touring Boston with Suzette. We navigated our way around the
city via the hop on hop off, Old Town Trolley Tours; their entertaining drivers
were a wealth of knowledge. Suzette also took me to the Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum for a fascinating few hours.
Isabella
Stewart Gardner (1840 – 1924) was a woman ahead of her times; an avid collector
and philanthropist, Isabella had a passion for travel, entertaining and
adventure. She spent more than thirty years traveling the world collecting art
and antiques.
The
collection itself is housed in Fenway Court, a building commissioned by
Isabella and first opened to the public in 1903. Styled after a 15th-century
Venetian palace, the museum is three storeys high with the galleries
surrounding a central, sun and flower-filled garden courtyard. Sadly,
photography is strictly forbidden within the museum and gardens, so I am unable
to visually share any of the wondrous treasures we saw there.
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| Outside Cheers Beacon Hill |
Back on
our trolley tour, we made the Cheers bar (“Where
Everybody Knows Your Name”) our final stop. Originally the Bull & Finch
Pub, the exterior was used for the television sitcom, Cheers. It was renamed Cheers Beacon Hill in 2002 after the popular
show, which ran from 1982 until 1993.
Initially
we just planned on taking a few photos of the exterior before catching the
train home to Suzette’s… What can I say? It was a hot day, we were feeling a
little weary from all our sightseeing and before we knew it, as if by magic, we
were sitting downstairs at the bar drinking 20oz jugs of Samuel Adams beer and
chatting with the locals.
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| Enjoying a couple of beers at Cheers after a hot day touring Boston |
Later,
after a most entertaining two hours, we said our goodbyes and made it safely
back to Milton and Suzette’s delicious, homemade lobster rolls for dinner. I
planned on introducing Suzette and David to our famous Antipodean dessert,
pavlova, as a final “Thank-you-for-having-me” treat before flying home to
Australia the next day…
Note to
self: too many beers at Cheers leads to less than impressive pavlova making.
I
inadvertently (or some might say, unsurprisingly) misread the recipe and added
too much vinegar to the mixture. The end result that evening was a chewy, sweet, flat meringue pancake… looks like I may have to come back one day, if only
to resurrect the reputation of our national dessert…
Annie Barr
