[lemonadelife_blog]

It’s funny how misunderstandings can work out in your favor. My boyfriend and his roommate had a misunderstanding on who would be at their apartment this weekend, and it wasn’t until we came up on Friday that we found out his roommate was having a party on Saturday night. We decided that we would go back to the city for Saturday night, but before that, we took advantage of the beautiful spring weather and did a little accidental touristing.

I haven’t been out of New York since early December and I thought going to Connecticut would be fun. It’s less than an hour from where Erik lives so it seemed like an easy option. We set out on I-684 and headed into Connecticut. We hadn’t had breakfast yet, so we stopped off the freeway for a quick bite at a diner.

After we sat down, I took out my blood glucose meter to test. As the meter counted down, the waitress comes over and I hear a gasp, “Ohmygod!” Uh oh, I think. She’s going to tell me how gross that is, do I really need to do that, could I do that somewhere else. “Could you do that again?” the waitress asks. Huh? Turns out, the waitress’s husband was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes just a few days ago and she and her husband didn’t know how to use their glucose meter. She asked me if I could show her how to use it. So, in the diner, I explained step-by-step to my waitress how to use a glucose meter. I’ve always said I am like a beacon for diabetes (seriously, did someone put some of tracking device on me when I wasn’t looking?). But it was such a funny coincidence and a real teaching opportunity that I might have missed had we not stopped.



Back on the road, Erik suggested we go to Hartford to see the Mark Twain House. About five miles outside of Hartford, I took out my iPhone and looked up how far Hartford was from Boston. Turns out, it’s less than 2 hours away. “Do you want to go to Boston?” I asked. Erik looked at me, “Okay.”

And that’s how we decided to go to Boston. Cuz that’s how we roll.

Of course, since we already in Hartford, we continued with our original plan. We circled around the downtown area, saw the Capitol building and a really cool archway.



Then we drove a couple of miles to the Mark Twain House, which Sam Clemens built and lived in for 17 years. I learned a lot about Mark-slash-Sam (as he was called at home). The house was wonderfully decorated and their museum had awesome LEGO interpretations. Unfortunately they didn’t allow pictures in the house. Bummer.



Just a couple hours later and we were navigating our way off I-90 (harder than it looks when the entire thing is underground!) but we managed to only make one loop to Logan airport before we finally exited and meandered our way through downtown Boston on our way to the Back Bay where I had made reservations to stay at Hotel 140, just a couple blocks from Boston Commons. The hotel was inexpensive, but comfortable. It’s was sparse in amenities and style, but it was decent and was exactly what we needed for a quick one night stay. It was a quarter to five by the time we made it out of the apartment after dropping off our bags, and we walked along the Freedom Trail on our way to the North End to have dinner.

We snapped pictures of the folks having fun in the park, the historic sites and a fun breakdancing performance at Faneuil Hall.



One breakdancer got a little frisky with an old lady who was boppin’ along to the music.



After a long walk through town we finally made it to the North End, where we did some accidental eating. We didn’t have any reservations, so the top restaurants were all pretty much booked or had a long waiting list, so we ended up at a nice Italian restaurant called Lucia with murals painted on the ceiling and a hostess with a thick Boston accent. But we couldn’t stop just at dinner – we also hit up Mike’s Pastry, the place for cannolis. Well, that’s what the mile long line down the street seemed to indicate!



Unfortunately, a low blood sugar (from all that walking!) and sore feet cut the night short, so we ended up crashing just before eleven o’clock.

Tomorrow: An Accidental Harvard.


Filed under: Favorite Things, Photos, Touristing, Travel

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