Christmas in Boston

I love December. The cold weather, the snow, the Christmas spirit, the lights, I love it all! We haven't had much snow here yet, but I am loving the season here! The Boston Common is decked in lights, including a big pine tree that was a gift from Nova Scotia almost 100 years ago. They also have ice skating at Frog Pond. There are huge lighted stars hanging across the streets. And at Faneuil Hall, they have another huge tree that they light. And they do a light show. There are trees lining the walk leading to the huge tree in the center and they do the lights to music. It was so fun walking around seeing everything. It was insanely busy though. There were so many college kids dressed up like Santa, Santa's helpers, elves, or wearing horrible Christmas polyester suits. It was pretty crazy.

The Common Tree

Faneuil Hall

Faneuil Hall Tree

We also got to see The Nutcracker! Greg took me for my birthday on Tuesday. I took the day off work and it just happened to be the perfect time in the semester for Greg to have a day off too! We wanted to sleep in but we're old now and woke up at 7 on the dot. Greg made me gingerbread waffles for breakfast and we watched The Holiday while we ate. Side note, that's my favourite Christmas movie. Then we went downtown to Eataly. It's owned by Mario Batali and is a huge Italian market with a butcher, seafood counter, more cheese than I have ever seen in my life, several restaurants, some cafes and so much more stuff! It was awesome! We got off on the wrong train stop accidentally and we took a wrong turn so we ended up in a sketchy part of town we haven't been in before. We saw a drug deal go down and then went back a block into the Financial District. Quite the contrast going from homeless/drug deals to crazy expensive boutiques and people walking around in thousand dollar suits. I do love walking around Boston. There are people from all walks of life, the city is beautiful, and you always have to laugh at the people trying to drive downtown. Plus there are so many cathedrals and temples downtown! It's really cool.

After Eataly we walked over to the Boston Public Library. It is HUGE! There were 3 or 4 floors. We wanted to walk around and look at all the books but we were tired of walking so we ended up just sitting in the library for about an hour before walking to the Theatre District for dinner. Greg took me to this place where they grill everything and it was awesome! Greg got a huge pork chop and grilled sweet potatoes and I got salmon and grilled green beans. We love grilled food! We had some time before the ballet started so we walked and got some gelato. And then we walked over to the Boston Opera House. I can't say enough about the Opera House. It looked like it came from Versailles. And the ballet was amazing. Greg has never been to the ballet and impressively he only got a little bit bored near the end of the ballet. I loved all of it though! The costumes, the dancers, the sets, and there was one part where it was snowing and it was so great! Ah it was so magical! And we picked these seats because they were pretty cheap, and they ended up being great! They were way over on the side, but we got to go through this fancy curtain into the box and it was just the two of us in our row. There was this couple sitting behind us that we laughed at a lot. They were like 19 and he was so into her and she was so using him. It got a little awkward at parts haha. We also felt super old just listening to them talk. Guess we're growing up. It was a great birthday!

I did get my first bout of homesickness though. It was Payton's birthday on Saturday and my mom's birthday yesterday and it was so weird not being there for their birthdays! I am so glad we were able to change our flight so we can come home 6 days earlier than we planned to!