stepping off the edge

Pictured above, my friends, is a statue in the Boston Commons called “the embrace.” Truly moving in its perfect depiction of two people becoming one in an embrace. It commemorates a photograph of Rev. Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King when he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Hard to describe how powerful it is.

Here we are once again at a home exchange in a great neighborhood in the city of Boston. Nice little village just a few blocks from our apartment. The host? Wonderful and wacky… interesting how those two seem to go together. She was doing small home repairs on our place when we arrived. It was a three story triplex and we were in the bottom apartment. Not the basement mind you. The laundry facilities, which we sorely needed at this point in the trip, were in the basement under our ground floor unit which, because the home was built on a hillside, was several levels below the street. Now she did warn us that the house was over 150 years old but that did not prepare us for the serial killer dungeon that we had to enter to access the laundry!

Quite the spot! Let’s just say we did not linger while the wash was being done!

A great first night dinner in the village with a particularly creative appetizer of stuffed whole artichoke hearts wrapped in prosciutto and grilled… amazing.

Most of our day in the city was spent walking the Freedom Trail that winds through the downtown…

And a nice lunch at the oldest restaurant in the country. Great oysters, disappointing baked beans! And speaking of disappointing, no, Boston does not have pizza better than NJ, there, I said it!

We were also able to navigate the public transportation. Getting good at this. It involved a train from the Roslindale village near our home to downtown Boston. Easy ride that brought us right where we wanted to go. Well almost. It was a 12,000 step day!

It was just a one dinner and one lunch visit but it still did not compare with the Ethiopian restaurant in DC, you remember, the one with no silverware? Or the Ecuadorian place that also hosted south of the border karaoke!

It was nice to see a revolutionary general named Hooker commemorated! Wonder if he was the inspiration for the term. Hmmmm…

Finally, before we head to the great north east I will leave you with this… after faithfully chronicling speed bumps, speed humps, and speed lumps, I give you the speed table with the promise that this will be the last. Well, until I find the elusive speed jump!