Saturday, January 23, 2010
Bean Town
This was written a long time ago, but I'm just getting around to posting it. My goal is to get caught up in the next week or so....
After a short, but really nice visit with Naomi—she’s growing so fast and really happy most of the time—lots of smiles and giggles.
We had to get up early Monday morning to catch a plane for Boston—everything was pretty uneventful. Planes were on time, rental car was ready and traffic wasn’t too bad to get to our hotel. We found a great seafood restaurant close to our hotel called Finz. That night we had to stay up late to watch Monday night football (MN vs. Green Bay). Since I’d just been to Green Bay and Brett Farve has moved to the Vikings—there was a lot of talk about the game. It was a good game—especially since the Vikings came out on top.
The next day, I had a meeting at a college that was close to our hotel—only about 10 miles, but we ended up in construction and very slow moving traffic and then the road we were suppose to turn on was blocked—so we got to the college right as my meeting was scheduled to start. Bob dropped me off right at the door and a security guard brought me to the room.
That night was when the MN Twins were playing Detroit Tigers in a playoff game for the Central Division Championship (Yay, they won!). However, it was another late night. We watched more sports than we had for a long time.
The next morning, we got up very early to take the T into downtown Boston. When we checked in to the hotel, the clerk told us the best way to get downtown was to take the T—and there was a station right around the corner. He gave us the timetable for the train and we were figuring how to get to the college. I asked the desk clerk a whole lot of questions and directions. We even decided we didn’t need to leave quite as early as we originally planned.
We were fortunate, because as we were leaving the hotel it started sprinkling, as we were crossing the train tracks it was raining a little harder. When we got to the shelter, it started to pour. As I was riding the T, my mind kept repeating the Kingston Trio lyrics ‘did he ever return? No, he never returned and his fate is still unknown…’ But we didn’t have any issues and it was a very nice ride and walk through downtown Boston to go to Ben Franklin Institute of Technology. That afternoon, we visited another college.
We checked out of the hotel and headed for southern Mass and Rhode Island. The trees were absolutely beautiful. I’ve often heard of New England in the Fall, and I think it would be even prettier farther north, but there was still some spectacular scenery. I had one visit in Fall River—we had some time before the meeting, so sat in Battleship Park and ate lunch. We could see huge battleships right on the harbor.
We headed south and crossed over into Rhode Island, went though Newport and got into Warwick where the Leadership Conference was being held. The hotel was a Crowne Plaza, which was pretty fancy. The conference was held at CC of Rhode Island which was very close to the hotel.
We could see this huge round building up on the hill and wondered if it was the college. When we got there we saw it was the college and a very distinct shape. I mentioned it was ‘interesting’ and several students laughed and said ‘you mean ugly, don’t you?’ They told me it was in the shape of a submarine—and really had that theme throughout the entire building. Some of the windows looked like portholes; the bathrooms looked like stainless steel metal cabinets and everything was stainless steel inside.
Bob met up with Joe, one of his high school classmates, and his wife. They picked me up and we went out to eat at a Legal’s Seafood. I had a cup of clam chowder, but Joe thought we needed to try several things, so he ordered raw clams on the half-shell and a bucket of steamers. We had to try them all. The raw clams were a lot like raw oysters. The steamers had to be peeled to get the sand off them. Then you swished them in broth to wash them off. They were very good.
The next night we moved back to the same hotel we were in the first couple nights, since it was pretty close to the airport. Sunday, we flew in to Hibbing and were able to spend a few days with Naomi.
After a short, but really nice visit with Naomi—she’s growing so fast and really happy most of the time—lots of smiles and giggles.We had to get up early Monday morning to catch a plane for Boston—everything was pretty uneventful. Planes were on time, rental car was ready and traffic wasn’t too bad to get to our hotel. We found a great seafood restaurant close to our hotel called Finz. That night we had to stay up late to watch Monday night football (MN vs. Green Bay). Since I’d just been to Green Bay and Brett Farve has moved to the Vikings—there was a lot of talk about the game. It was a good game—especially since the Vikings came out on top.
The next day, I had a meeting at a college that was close to our hotel—only about 10 miles, but we ended up in construction and very slow moving traffic and then the road we were suppose to turn on was blocked—so we got to the college right as my meeting was scheduled to start. Bob dropped me off right at the door and a security guard brought me to the room.
That night was when the MN Twins were playing Detroit Tigers in a playoff game for the Central Division Championship (Yay, they won!). However, it was another late night. We watched more sports than we had for a long time.
The next morning, we got up very early to take the T into downtown Boston. When we checked in to the hotel, the clerk told us the best way to get downtown was to take the T—and there was a station right around the corner. He gave us the timetable for the train and we were figuring how to get to the college. I asked the desk clerk a whole lot of questions and directions. We even decided we didn’t need to leave quite as early as we originally planned. We were fortunate, because as we were leaving the hotel it started sprinkling, as we were crossing the train tracks it was raining a little harder. When we got to the shelter, it started to pour. As I was riding the T, my mind kept repeating the Kingston Trio lyrics ‘did he ever return? No, he never returned and his fate is still unknown…’ But we didn’t have any issues and it was a very nice ride and walk through downtown Boston to go to Ben Franklin Institute of Technology. That afternoon, we visited another college.
We checked out of the hotel and headed for southern Mass and Rhode Island. The trees were absolutely beautiful. I’ve often heard of New England in the Fall, and I think it would be even prettier farther north, but there was still some spectacular scenery. I had one visit in Fall River—we had some time before the meeting, so sat in Battleship Park and ate lunch. We could see huge battleships right on the harbor. We headed south and crossed over into Rhode Island, went though Newport and got into Warwick where the Leadership Conference was being held. The hotel was a Crowne Plaza, which was pretty fancy. The conference was held at CC of Rhode Island which was very close to the hotel.
We could see this huge round building up on the hill and wondered if it was the college. When we got there we saw it was the college and a very distinct shape. I mentioned it was ‘interesting’ and several students laughed and said ‘you mean ugly, don’t you?’ They told me it was in the shape of a submarine—and really had that theme throughout the entire building. Some of the windows looked like portholes; the bathrooms looked like stainless steel metal cabinets and everything was stainless steel inside.Bob met up with Joe, one of his high school classmates, and his wife. They picked me up and we went out to eat at a Legal’s Seafood. I had a cup of clam chowder, but Joe thought we needed to try several things, so he ordered raw clams on the half-shell and a bucket of steamers. We had to try them all. The raw clams were a lot like raw oysters. The steamers had to be peeled to get the sand off them. Then you swished them in broth to wash them off. They were very good.
The next night we moved back to the same hotel we were in the first couple nights, since it was pretty close to the airport. Sunday, we flew in to Hibbing and were able to spend a few days with Naomi.
# posted by bjm @ 7:03 PM 
