Trick or Treating in Boston

Trick or Treating in Boston

Todd Swank's Diary Entry for November 5, 2023

It was my sister's 60th birthday this past week.  Her family decided to surprise her with a trip to one of her favorite places.  Boston, Massachusetts.  They then decided to surprise her again by inviting us to join them.

We flew in a day after they arrived and went to a restaurant near our hotel.  We then waited for them and surprised her when she came to our table.  She appeared to be pretty shocked.

We were so happy that Luke, Avery, and Abby were able to join us for the trip.  We have a good time together.

Luke and Avery always love hanging out with their cousins, Lauren & Brittany.  We don't get to do it often enough so make the best of it whenever we get the chance.

We spent a good amount of our trip walking around the streets of Boston.  It's a beautiful city and we found ourselves visiting all sorts of interesting locales.

We walked between 5 - 7 miles a day and were a bit paranoid about Grandma Linda being able to keep up with us for a trip like this.  We decided to rent a wheelchair for her.  She resisted the idea at first, but I think she appreciated it once she realized how much of a challenge it would have been without one.  She didn't like it much when we teased her and said we were going to park her by a pole for an hour or so while we visited more bars.  She's a pretty good sport though and didn't stay angry about it for too long.

Whenever you visit Boston, people tell you must get Cannolis in the north end.  We went to Mike's Pastry where there is a perpetual line to buy these sugary treats.  I gotta be honest, I don't understand the attraction.  They just don't taste that good to me.

We visited many excellent bars & restaurants and had lots of laughs.  Not necessarily in that order.

I'm not a big fan of silly rules, so when we were at one meal and I had to stare at this door for awhile I decided to find out why entry was prohibited.  Turns out it was just a dark room with a sprinkler system inside.  I thought for sure they were hiding a secret passage of some kind.  Such a letdown.

Eventually Ben was able to join us and we took the train to Salem. It's an excellent destination for Halloween with all the witches and other scary stuff they have there.

  We lost Grandma shortly after we arrived.  We were getting kind of tired of pushing her around anyways.

We had breakfast at a place called Red's which was really good.  We didn't get to meet Red, though.  Not sure if he still works there.

We were warned that the crowds in Salem during Halloween were huge.  It was busy, but not unbearably so.  Since we went on a rainy day, that may have helped us a bit in that regard.  It was quite the fun experience even if it was a wet one.

It rained quite a bit of the time while we were there.  I thought that meant we'd spend more time inside, but my sister and her family don't think that way.  We walked a lot in the rain.  It was still fun, but walking with wet socks gets to be a bit annoying after a few miles.

On Halloween day, we went to Beacon Hill which is a historic neighborhood in Boston originally built in 1795.  There are steep streets lined with Federal-style and Victorian brick row houses lit by antique lanterns.  The city closes off some of the streets so the kids can go trick or treating without fear of being run over.  There were so many people out and about and all I kept thinking was I'm so glad I didn't have to pay for all of that candy being given away.

Some of the houses went all out with the decorations.  We really liked the Harry Potter house and the Taylor Swift house decorated with the gravestones of her former boyfriends.  Travis Kelce's was labeled TBD.

On our last day in town, we took the trolley around to stop at neighborhoods we hadn't had a chance to visit yet.  We visited the USS Constitution which is the oldest commissioned naval vessel still afloat in the world.  It originally launched in 1797 and earned the nickname Old Ironsides during the War of 1812 when cannonballs seemed to bounce off of it's thick oak hull.  That's strong.

  We ate at the Pier 6 restaurant which gave us a private room to oversee the harbor while we dined.  I think they might have had suspicions about how loud we can be while we eat.

When we came home to Minnesota we decided we didn't get to enough bars and restaurants while on vacation so we reached out to our buddies, Karl and Tina, to do it again on Saturday night.  A good time was had by all involved.