Day 1 -- to Boston

Welcome back to the Long Family travel blog! Join us as we explore parts of New England and the East Coast and knock off four more states on our quest to get all 50: Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Jersey. Due to the time constraints that come with having active teens, we won’t be on the road for three-plus weeks this summer; we’re fitting this tour into about 12 days, so we’re leaving Teardrop at home, sadly.

We flew to Boston yesterday afternoon, rented a minivan and drove to our hotel, The Verb, which is literally in the shadow of Fenway Park. As I searched for a place to stay in Boston, I came across the usual stuffy big-city hotels — in Boston, they all seem to have an starched, colonial air — and then there was The Verb, a former Howard Johnson’s motel-turned-hipster hotspot, with record players in every room, bins of vinyl LPs that guests are free to borrow in the lobby, a funky sushi bar/burger joint called HoJoKo (heh, get it?) and a profusion of '70s and '80s rock ’n’ roll posters and memorabilia.  How could I pass that up?

U2 and New Order albums. Fenway out our window.

That's Fenway Park looming in the background.

After we checked in, I left to meet Alisa, my good friend and St. Olaf College roommate, who’s lived and worked in Boston for almost 20 years. While we caught up over dinner and drinks near Newbury Street, Keith talked the kids into grabbing food at HoJoKo, and they politely indulged him despite being largely unimpressed by the options. (What?! My children aren’t interested in eating grilled squid tentacles with lemon, ponzu and kewpie? Or crispy calves brains with green onion and bonito flakes? Shocker.)

After dinner, Keith got everyone tucked in to bed. I stayed out until after midnight and took a cab back to the hotel.

We woke up this morning to an humid, overcast day. We strolled a few blocks to a cozy cafe where we enjoyed lemon, blueberry, and goat cheese and arugula crepes, then cut across the Fenway to the Museum of Fine Arts to connect with Alisa, her husband, TIm, and their 5-year-old daughter, Francesca, or Frankie.

With Frankie as our guide, we got a whirlwind tour of the MFA that included stops in the European galleries (Monet!), antiquities galleries (mummies!) and a peek at the Botticelli special exhibition. 

In the afternoon, we piled in the car, cued up a Boston-only playlist featuring the Pixies, the Cars, Aerosmith, the Lemonheads, Juliana Hatfield and — you guessed it, — Boston, then drove 25 minutes to Melrose, outside of Boston, where Tim, Alisa and Frankie hosted a cookout. Frankie got to show off her Barbie collection, and the big kids played hide-and-seek with her, put together puzzles and made mud pies in the backyard while Tim and Alisa grilled up burgers and hot dogs and whipped up a mean German potato salad.

After lunch, we strolled down to the corner store for ice cream cones, then Frankie showed us around the park across the street,  a large green space with ball fields and a playground. What an idyllic area. The streets in Melrose are lined with tidy, well-kept homes — most of them well over 100 years old. The whole neighborhood is so quaint and charming.

In the evening, the five of us took in a Red Sox game across the street from our hotel. It was a beautiful night for baseball! We had great seats in left field just beyond third base. In the seventh inning there was some kind of kerfuffle on the field — a mixed-up call led to a heated exchange between an umpire and the Red Sox manager, and the ump finally ejected the manager from the game. They were yelling at each other so closely and so passionately, with their mouths open and spit flying, it looked like they were French kissing. We only stayed through the end of that inning; we were tired, and the game had gotten kind of long and drawn-out until that point. We were disappointed to find out later that we missed some excitement in the 9th, with the Red Sox trailing the Los Angeles Angels 6-3, and the bases loaded. But the Sox ended up losing, anyway. Oh well!