We are loving it here in MA. I say that a lot. And the only time I take it back is when we are driving. Driving here is the worst. I can't even describe it without getting mad. Just know that driving here is terrible and everything else is great. This past weekend we had so much fun! We did a ton of stuff and it was amazing, but we were completely exhausted. I took a 2 hour nap on Sunday to try and catch up on sleep!
On Friday, Greg planned date night. At my request, we watched Hocus Pocus while we ate dinner. We were planning to go to Salem on Saturday so of course we had to watch that before going. After dinner we walked to this darling European bakery that's about a mile away. We saw it once when we were on the train and logged it away to try in the future. It's called Athan's European Bakery and it's been in Brookline since the 30's.
They had so many cookies, chocolates, cakes, pastries, and they had gelato! Greg got the framboise cake (chocolate and raspberry) and I got the double chocolate (white cake and chocolate cake covered in ganache). The bins were all old wood and the tables and chairs looked original (but weren't). There was a big brick wall and the coffee bar looked original too. I fell in love with it instantly. And then I had the cake and fell even more in love. We'll be visiting there a lot I think.
It was lightly raining when we left our apartment. While we were eating, it started pouring rain. The picture of the bakery above was taken when we left. The water there was easily above our ankles. The rain was unrelenting as we walked home and we were just laughing and enjoying it. At one point the street and sidewalk were completely covered in water. I'm not sure how deep it was on the road, but the sidewalk we were walking through had water up to mid calf but every time a car drove past it would send waves our way so we both got wet up to mid thigh. It was about this point in the walk that we both got warnings on our phones for severe flood warnings. Thanks for the warning, we wouldn't have been aware otherwise. We got home full of laughter and water and had to take a picture of how wet our pants got. My shoes are normally a medium blue but they were so wet they looked navy. It was nothing short of an adventure walking home in that. And yes, I do have rain boots but it was only sprinkling when we left. Greg didn't have any rain boots but we ordered some from Amazon after this.
We quickly got out of our wet clothes and went down to the basement to wash and dry all of our wet clothes (fun fact, it costs us $2 to wash a load of laundry, and that's a steal). Greg also planned for us to watch The Departed. It was one of the first movies we watched on VidAngel and we both loved it! It'd been a while since we'd seen it so we watched it Friday night. We had forgotten that it takes place in Boston and we really enjoyed recognizing cities they were talking about and even recognizing places we've been that were in the movie. Thank heavens for VidAngel! $1 for a movie, and we got to enjoy a movie that is so well done without hearing any of the language we didn't want to hear or seeing some of the things we didn't want to see. Between taking forever to walk home in the rain and needing to stop the movie a couple of times to go get laundry, we didn't get to bed until about 2 AM. Since we had a lot planned for Saturday we got up at 8 (5.5 hours is not enough sleep for us so that was rough) and got ready to go to Salem! I love history and have been fascinated with witch hunts and the witch trials in Salem for a long time. I have wanted to visit Salem since I remember seeing Hocus Pocus for the first time. Back in March when we decided on Boston College for grad school, I was already mentally planning a trip to Salem for October. Salem is about 28 miles from us and it took us an hour to get there (welcome to MA driving). It was PACKED. We drove around the block once and couldn't park anywhere so when we were coming around again to park in the garage at the mall, the church right on the corner opened up their tiny parking lot! We paid the same amount to park there as we would have in the garage, but there were only about 10 cars back there as opposed to a full garage so that was perfect. What I really wanted to see were the museums. We parked just down the street from the Witch History Museum so we went to check that out first. We hadn't planned on a full day here, so we were shocked and disappointed to find out that 45 minutes after opening (10:45), the tickets for every tour were sold out until 3! It looked like the other museums were going to be like that too. We were disappointed because we really wanted to see the museums, but fortunately, we live here now so we can see that stuff next year and go in September or November when it's less crowded! So we walked around and went into some really cool shops that sold wands, crystals, books on witchcraft and the occult, and tons of other stuff. We went to the memorial site, the graveyard (most of the headstones were so worn we couldn't read many names or dates, but still cool), Judge Corwin's house which is the only house still around that was associated with the trials, and we went to the Old Town Hall. There they had a little exhibit that we got to see. They had just a little walk through of Salem through the ages. We read a lot about the witch trials and saw some old writings. And we learned that Milton Bradley started his company just outside of Salem so they had some original Monopoly and Clue boards out as well as some original card games on display. We had done some research on Salem and learned that the best burger in town (some say the best burger in MA), was just a few streets down from us. We found the little hole in the wall pub, Major Magleashes Pub, and went it. The place was decked out for Halloween, just like everywhere in Salem, but you could tell that under that it was the quintessential Irish pub. I ordered a cheeseburger (just meat and cheese, like it should be) and Greg got the club burger which included lettuce, tomatoes and onions. Greg got onion rings and I got fries. We had to wait a while for the hamburgers but that was fine with us because that always means it's made to order and we could see the cook behind the bar working on them. These burgers were probably 10-12 ounces of juicy beef. Perfectly cooked, little bit of sweet sauce on it, melty cheese, and a perfectly toasted bun made this burger well worth the walk and the wait. We couldn't get over how good they were! After lunch we wanted to walk down to the docks and see the house with the seven gables (Nathaniel Hawthorne), but we were super tired from walking and it was the other side of town and it was raining so we decided to call it a day. We'll be back next year for sure. There was so much to see and do and everything was so well done. Salem goes all out for this every year! We loved it.
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| One of the stores we went in, no pictures allowed inside |
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| Roger Conant, founder of Salem |
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| Memorial |
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| Graveyard |
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| Old house next to the graveyard |
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| Judge Corwin's House |
We did some grocery shopping on the way home and hurried home. We had reservations for the last night of the Hartford Connecticut Temple open house. We loved the drive down there. We couldn't really see anything since it was dark, but we haven't just gotten on a freeway and driven for a looong time so we loved that. Plus, we listened to Harry Potter on the drive which was great! We got to the temple and walked right into a tent. In our tour group, we think we might have been the only members so that was a really cool experience. The temple was beautiful and they did a great job explaining what happens in the temple. We loved it! The outside of the temple was super impressive. Driving up to it was awesome.
We were getting ready to leave when I heard some teenagers talking about going to get Chick-fil-A on the way home. My ears perked up instantly. We haven't had it since before we left Utah! It was about 20 minutes out of the way but well worth it. Harry Potter kept us company again and kept us awake until the last half hour of the drive we had to turn on music because it was getting really hard to stay awake. Fortunately we made it home safely! We got about 6 1/2 hours of sleep before having to get up for church. We were sooo tired. Poor Greg didn't even get a nap after church! He went home teaching and I fell asleep while he was gone and slept for 2 hours... Whoops! It was a super fun, super exhausting weekend. We love being out here!
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