La Femme….in Boston

Last July, after our week in New Hampshire and Vermont K and I drove down to Boston for a long weekend, thus completing our mini New England odyssey.   I found Boston to be a lovely, almost magical city, so much so that remembering our time there, it is easy for me to forget the stifling heat (seriously, I made K stop at a Chipotle just so I could be in air-conditioning and drink an ice cold Coke.  Nothing tastes better than ice cold Coke when you are sweltering) and instead remember our few days there as a hazy, leisurely, romantic weekend.

After pooing out that stupid pit!

Traveling with K is always easy and always fun.   Luckily, we love to spend time together and uninterrupted time together is the best. In the interest of full disclosure, before I wax poetic about our romantic weekend (anytime you come from a wedding, I think romance is in the air), I have to share our drive from Vermont.  Everything was going swimmingly, the car was cool and the traffic was flowing nicely.  Suddenly my mom calls.  From the moment I said "Hi!", I could tell that something was wrong, and I knew it was something with my beloved pup, Rufus.  Long story short, he had swallowed some sort of pit and my Mom had quickly taken him to the vet clinic that I work for.  After talking to the doctor, I had worked myself into a complete frenzy, convinced he would need foreign body surgery.  Poor K had hit Boston traffic and was trying to get us to the car rental return.  After getting to our hotel, I was still in a state of panic and so we decided to get a drink and walked to a nearby hotel bar (I have a soft spot for a good hotel bar).  I could barely notice the Back Bay neighborhood or be charmed by the brownstones, instead I could only focus on my boo boo baby (yes, I call him that).  Luckily, seconds after sitting down, I checked my phone and the vet had left a message that he had passed the pit!  Our vacation could resume and I could begin to relax and quickly did (with a celebratory cocktail, or three). 

We stayed at the quaint but modern Chandler Inn, our room was tiny but comfortable.  My favorite part of the hotel was the gay sports bar adjacent to it.  Every time K and I would walk down the street, there would be some adorable guys outside ready to make comments to us. It didn't help that for some reason K and I decided we were the Beckhams this trip and every day accidentally coordinated our outfits; one day we both wore green, the next purple.  This amused the peeps down at Fritz (best name for a gay sports bar ever) a lot.  Our neighborhood, the Back Bay was charming, filled with drool worthy brownstones, an adorable square of cute restaurants and café lights and a banging, modern wine shop.  I loved it.

K and I spent our days wandering around the city, from Newberry Street, where we had a lovely lunch al fresco and I spotted the cutest dog ever in the window of an eyeglass shop (other than Ruf, obvs).  We visited the HUGE Anthropologie and the tiny Jonathan Adler store, and bought our pups some souvenirs from an adorable doggie boutique.  What struck me most is just how pleasant and friendly everyone was, it was something I just wasn't expecting from this brusque east coast city.  My favorite moment was when I got an ice cream on our last day; we went to a soft serve truck and I ordered a cone.  I then noticed that they had sprinkles so of course, I had to get some.  The guy obliged, but not before good-naturedly  telling  me in a thick Boston Accent, "you're gettin' real little kid on us".  I was smitten!  The only way I could have been more chuffed is if someone had said to me, how do you like dem apples!   It basically made my life.

The Freedom Trail which crosses through the whole city was also one of the highlights for me.  Months later it all runs together and I don't have much of a head for historical facts.  But I loved wandering through the city, visiting cemeteries, churches and City Hall.  It made me unexpectedly patriotic.  K and I also got to stroll through the North End, which is the Italian neighborhood and I fell in love.  It was so uniquely American, with great restauarnats and terrible, tourist shops and real people who lived there.  The architecture was old but didn't feel like anywhere in Europe I'd ever been.  We knew we had to return for dinner that night, which we did, to Lo Conte's, a Italian red sauce joint that fulfilled my craving for Italian American food.  Walking in the evening all the way back to our hotel, we strolled and held hands and it was lovely.  Speaking of food, another highlight was a lobster roll that we had the next day for lunch.  We went to this place right by the water and there were a bunch of people ordering lobster rolls (there were people tourists who didn't want any mayo on it, WTF!) and they had a huge tank full of the very bugs we were about to eat.  We ate our rolls and clam chowder outside and it was filling and delicious.

Now this wouldn't be a post from La Femme unless I discussed cocktails, right?  Drink was a bar I knew I wanted to go to as soon as I started researching Boston.  But, K and I were kind of an a budget this trip because we had literally closed on our house a few days before leaving.  So I didn't think blowing $$$ on cocktails was very wise, and K and I don't have a very good history of sticking to our vacation budget (our mindset is, don't regret something later, you never know if you'll make it back).  Long story short, I thought we wouldn't make it to Drink.  But lo and behold, after spending an afternoon wandering around Harvard University and the surrounding Cambridge neighborhood, we found ourselves at an underground tavern at 2:30 pm discussing what to do next.  We had dinner plans, yes, but it was so stinking hot, we couldn't stand to walk outside any more than necessary.  And although our bartender was very friendly, I didn't want to spend all afternoon sitting and drinking rum and cokes at a nondescript student hangout.  So, looking at my guidebook, I suggested Drink to K, telling him it was one of the most highly regarded cocktail bars in America.  He wondered why I hadn't mentioned it before, and before I knew it, we were on our way to South Boston.  We wandered around the quiet, industrial neighborhood for a while waiting for the appropriate time after it opened to go in. Luckily we weren't the first and we took a seat at the very long bar.

Drink was perhaps one of my favorite bar experiences, ever.  The bar steadily filled up but still remained fairly quiet, almost reverential.  The atmosphere, at least in the late afternoon wasn't my favorite (overall the look of the bar was a bit clinical for me), and K and I didn't have a chance to go back in the evening as we were leaving the next day (thank god we didn't go the first day, our budget would have been really blown, then!) but I have to say the drinks were some of the most carefully constructed, beautifully presented ones I have ever had.  There is no menu at Drink, instead you talk to your server about what you like/want.  I knew I wanted a Mary Pickford, one of my favorite rum drinks.  It was prepared carefully and served on a white napkin, almost like a gift.  I followed it up with a Ramos Gin Fizz, a difficult but tasty, lighter than air cocktail.  It takes a lot of shaking, and I did notice the bartender didn't seem to keen when other patrons began asking about my milkshake looking drink.  But he made me the best one I have had to date.  It was a lazy, sun filled afternoon that I will never forget.  And I can't wait to go back to Drink, to the North End, to Fritz's and to the lovely, charming, friendly city of Boston.

How about dem apples?

Julie