Weekend at Grace and Baldvin's, part 1
Due to an Amtrak promo this winter/spring, I earned a free roundtrip ticket on the Northeast Regional line, to be used during the summer. So I took the opportunity to break the loneliness of living alone these past two months to go up to Boston to visit Grace and Baldvin again. This is the fourth time I've seen them since they moved to Boston last summer, and it's been really great to have such frequent contact again.
I went up on Friday morning and after an hour delay, I was able to meet both of them at Back Bay Station. Luckily, Baldvin's work was flexible about when he could take his lunch break, so that the three of us could then walk to Chinatown to Empire Garden, a dim sum restaurant I had found online that is housed in an old theater, so you eat where the audience's seats would be and have the stage on one side and the balcony on the other. It was pretty neat atmosphere and the food was quite good: a Chinese woman with the dim sum cart would roll it around and open up the various bamboo containers. She only knew individual words in English, so the only descriptors we would get would be hugely basic: "beef", "mushroom", "sauce?" We just agreed every time, even when it was evident (at least to me) that we'd be getting beef tripe or pig's feet. All in all, we had 8 tasty baskets and it only came out to $12 a person, generous tip included.
Baldvin went back to work afterwards and Grace and I walked back to Copley Square and picked up some fruit and vegetables from the farmer's market there. I was happy to see more unusual items there, like gooseberries and red currants and generally the prices were more reasonable than the ones at our market in New Haven. I was a little jealous, though they didn't have any bakers and few butchers. After the market, we kept walking home, going past Fenway and through Brookline, where we stopped to get two bottles of rowé and a big slab of salmon at a good fishmonger. That salmon ended up feeding the three of us for 3 meals! It was delicious every time.
We ended up walking 5 miles by the time we had gotten home, so we rested by playing a game of Pandemic. Baldvin got home later (with my luggage, which he was so kind as to porter on public transportation) and we cracked open the Cote du Provence (excellent) and had the salmon baked with arctic thyme, carrots and broccoli. Grace also made a tomato, cucumber, basil and feta salad. It was great food and we played some board games together into the night.
I went up on Friday morning and after an hour delay, I was able to meet both of them at Back Bay Station. Luckily, Baldvin's work was flexible about when he could take his lunch break, so that the three of us could then walk to Chinatown to Empire Garden, a dim sum restaurant I had found online that is housed in an old theater, so you eat where the audience's seats would be and have the stage on one side and the balcony on the other. It was pretty neat atmosphere and the food was quite good: a Chinese woman with the dim sum cart would roll it around and open up the various bamboo containers. She only knew individual words in English, so the only descriptors we would get would be hugely basic: "beef", "mushroom", "sauce?" We just agreed every time, even when it was evident (at least to me) that we'd be getting beef tripe or pig's feet. All in all, we had 8 tasty baskets and it only came out to $12 a person, generous tip included.
Baldvin went back to work afterwards and Grace and I walked back to Copley Square and picked up some fruit and vegetables from the farmer's market there. I was happy to see more unusual items there, like gooseberries and red currants and generally the prices were more reasonable than the ones at our market in New Haven. I was a little jealous, though they didn't have any bakers and few butchers. After the market, we kept walking home, going past Fenway and through Brookline, where we stopped to get two bottles of rowé and a big slab of salmon at a good fishmonger. That salmon ended up feeding the three of us for 3 meals! It was delicious every time.
We ended up walking 5 miles by the time we had gotten home, so we rested by playing a game of Pandemic. Baldvin got home later (with my luggage, which he was so kind as to porter on public transportation) and we cracked open the Cote du Provence (excellent) and had the salmon baked with arctic thyme, carrots and broccoli. Grace also made a tomato, cucumber, basil and feta salad. It was great food and we played some board games together into the night.