Boston/Bar Harbor Trip - Part 2

The next day, Marc and I decided to hit the streets of Boston and walk the Freedom Trail.  If you haven't been to Boston, the Freedom Trail is essentially a 2.5 mile walking tour that takes you through cool historical sites in the city.  It's super neat!  You walk past Paul Revere's house, the Boston Massacre site, and can see Ben Franklin's grave.  The whole trail is marked with red bricks through the city...which is extremely similar to Dorothy's Yellow Brick Road (a reference I made several times, much to Marc's frustration).

I have a strange obsession with old things (particularly old cemeteries...I'm a weirdo), so this is obviously something I wanted to do while we were in town, especially since we only had a half day of "free time".   After a quick stop at Dunkin Donuts, we were off!  (don't judge...there aren't any DD's in Denver!)

The trail starts in the Boston Commons and eventually takes you to the notorious "North End".  The North End is the "little Italy" of Boston, and they turn out some fantastic food in this part of town =)

No trip to Boston is complete without a stop by Mike's Pastry shop in the North End.  You gotta get a cannoli!

The North End also includes the home of Paul Revere, and the Old North Church, where the lanterns were hung to announce the British army movement during the American Revolution.

Old North Church - where the famous lanterns were hung.

"One if by land, two if by sea".

The Freedom Trail basically ends at the Bunker Hill memorial and you can actually climb to the top of it - 294 stairs!  I have to admit, this didn't seem that difficult to me at first, but I was definitely huffin' and puffin' by the time we reached the top.

However, the big killer was the way down.  Our calves were screaming, but it was fun and totally worth it...we needed to burn off our cannoli =)

Our legs were literally shaking uncontrollably while we took this picture.

About to head down the stairs...make sure you watch your head!

If the weather was clearer, I'm sure the views would have been crazy awesome!

We did it!  Now I can eat another cannoli, right?

After we finished the Freedom Trail, we decided to rent a couple of bikes from Boston's bike share system and ride towards Harvard for lunch.  I honestly didn't realize how far away Harvard was from where we were...and considering we had just destroyed our legs at Bunker Hill, we were both pretty motivated to get to our next meal and beer quickly.

After lunch, we headed back to the hotel to get ready for the highlight of our Boston experience - the Red Sox game!

Boston/Bar Harbor Trip - Part 1

Hey gang!

My goodness...summer travel really is in full swing, isn't it?  I feel like all my friends are taking such exciting trips right now! 

Marc and I recently returned from our own little summer getaway to the northeast, so I wanted to share a few of the highlights.  The weather was not necessarily on our side, but we still had a great time.  It's been difficult adjusting to being home!

Part 1 - Arrival
Normally I would not dedicate a whole "part" to this, but I thought it was pretty funny.  We flew into Boston separately since I had a free flight with Delta to use, and Marc always flies United.  Both flights weren't schedule to arrive in Boston until around 6pm, so we didn't have much on the schedule except to go to dinner after we landed and checked in to our hotel.

What's funny about this is that I had a connection to make in Cincinnati, while Marc had a direct flight from Denver to Boston.  All during our planning he kept reminding me that I would probably be delayed since I had a connection and he didn't, so we should make our dinner reservations late just in case I got stuck in Cinci...

...well, it turns out my connections were fine and Marc was the one with the minor setback.  Marc's flight ended up getting a teensie bit delay (4 hours, actually), so I was basically on my own for dinner.  Luckily, I have a very close girlfriend who recently moved to Boston, so I gave Natalie a call and we went off to dinner while Marc was still waiting for his flight to take off =)

This was very unfortunate for Marc, but Natalie and I had a great time.  We went to this great place called Island Creek Oyster Bar, which came highly recommended by Yelp.

N-squared!  Our server gave us quite a generous pour of prosecco =)

I didn't take any pictures of our meal, but I will say that if you're in Boston and you want some delish seafood (especially oysters), hit this place up!  Just be sure you make a reservation - they are always packed, apparently!

Marc finally got into town and to the hotel around 11pm, so I joined him at the bar for a drink before turning in for the night.  I had a busy day planned for us the next day =)

'Murica!

Happy Birthday, America!

Love, Polly (your birthday buddy)

 

 

Polly is 3 years old today!  We aren't crazy dog people who really celebrate their dogs birthdays, we just dress them up in patriotic-wear for a birthday photo-shoot =)  You can see, she clearly loves it...

Hope everyone has a lovely 4th of July weekend!

Hiking Adventures: McCullough Gulch

This past weekend, Marc and I finally were able to get back to the Treehouse.  We hadn't been since the first week of April!

At Marc's suggestion, we spent Saturday doing some shopping (yes...HIS suggestion!) and part of that was a trip to purchase some new hiking shoes.  Well...if you buy new hiking shoes, you MUST break them in the next day, am I right?

I found another handy dandy hiking website for Summit County, which lists a bunch of different hikes in the area, based on difficulty.  For this trip, we opted to try out McCullough Gulch since it was pretty short but promised some great views.  We definitely weren't disappointed!


One thing to note - this hike said it was "easy/moderate" and I'm a little surprised by that.  There were definitely some parts that were steep, and we had to catch our breath a few times.  But, the new hiking shoes definitely helped with the incline and gripping the loose gravel.

New shoes - these were key!

Just beginning - you can see the bottom of the falls at the beginning of the hike.

Not sure the picture does it justice - but this was STEEP! 

All the snows hadn't quite melted, so getting to the alpine lake at the top was a little tricky.  But the view was worth it!

Finally made it to the gulch!

The alpine lake was absolutely beautiful.

The falls started right at the edge - I wish the sun was shining while I took this pic - you could literally see straight to the bottom of the lake.  The water was crystal clear!

Polly loves hiking - always be sure to pack a squirt bottle for your pup!

The squirt bottle makes it easy for the pup to drink when she wants.

Frolicking through some snow that hadn't quite melted yet.

The falls started right at the base of the lake.  The water was FREEZING!

I wanted to get a shot of Polly tackling the boulder fields.  She loves the rocks!

Overall - a great hike during mud season.  

Felices say Hi!

Happy hiking to all!

Going on Vacay!

So excited!  We leave tomorrow to head to the northeast for 5 days of sun and seafood...

...or so we thought.  Checking the weather and it's literally supposed to rain the.whole.time.  Oh well.  If all else fails, we'll just stuff ourselves full of lobster and I'll read the Alex Cross series for 5 days=)

But, if the weather is nice, here's what we have on the itinerary:

• - Catching a Red Sox game on Thursday!  Already purchased the tickets (part of Marc's birthday present) and the seats are pretty awesome - front rows along the 3rd base line - right in fowl-ball territory!
• - Biking around Boston!  Possibly hitting up the Freedom Trail and biking around Cambridge to see Harvard and MIT.  Is it dorky that I'm actually really excited about this?
• - Eating seafood!
• - Driving to Bar Harbor, Maine.
• - Eating more seafood.
• - Staying in a sweet little B&B in Bar Harbor - I'm actually very excited about this.  I feel like we're going to be going back in time.
• - Whale watching - you know this is a must for me =)
• - Eating seafood!
• - Biking and hiking in Acadia National Park.
• - Eating more seafood!

There you have it - our plan.  Hopefully it works out, but if the weather doesn't cooperate, I'm sure we'll still have fun.

Now...time to go gather my CD's in preparation for our road trip from Boston to Bar Harbor...

Happy Tuesday!

A helpful tip

I wanted to share a helpful tip that I discovered from a blog a few months ago.  I absolutely love rotating seasonal candles throughout the house, but I always get sad when I have to throw away a beautiful candle jar with wax left inside.

I don't know about you, but this was something that seriously bothered me.  Maybe even too much.  I mean...candle jars can be so pretty, but it's impossible to reuse them when there's that tiny bit of wax and the wick in the bottom, right?

Wrong, my friends.  Wrong!

Thanks to this hand blog post from Yellow Brick Home, I discovered an ingenious way to get rid of the excess candle wax and reuse the jar!

I used the method she did exactly - poured boiling water into the jar, waited for the wax to melt then cool, and then lifted it out!  It was so neato!

Do be sure you take note of her tips, especially the part about not pouring the hot water down the drain before the wax has had time to cool.

Hope this helps you out just a bit!  I did this over the weekend with great success, so I just had to share =)

Blah

...Marc was sick last week and, of course, now I'm sick.  No fun =(

On the plus side, Marc is an excellent nurse and is seriously awesome when it comes to taking care of me.  For example, he's at the grocery store right now picking up ingredients to make me beef and broccoli for dinner =)

Silver linings to an otherwise "blah" couple of days.  Oh well...hope you're having a great week!