Animal Tales & Birthdays

Labor Day weekend marks the unofficial end of summer in New England and thus is the last hurrah before school starts and work gets (more) serious again. My birthday typically falls during or near Labor Day, so I always treat it as an excuse to celebrate for three days instead of a measly one.

We kicked off the weekend at the freshly renovated Aquarium,

then took an inaugural ride on the new Greenway Carousel.

After adventures with our animal friends, we moved on to finding an appropriate birthday meal before the weekend is out.

Rockport: Swapping the TV for the Ocean

Fleeing the eerie silence of an empty city under lock-down, we headed North to the coast of Cape Ann. It had been a surreal week but we had had these weekend plans in place for a while and they proved to be a much needed break from the endless hours of watching the news of the manhunt for the Boston bombing suspects. 

Rockport, MA

Leaving the city is always a bit of a shock, even though I am from the ‘country’. Rockport was so quiet, so still and rather empty. We stayed at the Tuck Inn and immediately set off to explore the beautiful colonial downtown and the harbor. Rockport boasts the most painted building in America a red barn referred to as “Motif #1” because of it’s popularity with the painters. Bearskin Neck juts out into the harbor and is lined with shops and restaurants.

There's a few red barns on the harbor...

We spent our weekend walking and snacking and not watching the news. Lobster rolls are a must have; on Bearskin Neck just find the hole in the wall on the right headed out to sea and find a seat on the patio out back. Nothing beats fresh seafood overlooking the source.

Lobster - and love - is all you need

Since eating the main focus of the time not spent walking, the elephant ears / fudge shop on the neck is worth a stop too. Elephant ears are thin flaky spiral shaped pastries of cinnamon and sugar and butter.

A dinner plate sized snack

Sunday we stopped in Gloucester on the way home and visited the Fishermen’s Memorial for all the men of Gloucester lost at sea. The New England town was made tragically famous by the 90’s film “The Perfect Storm.”

Fishermen's Memorial

Sometimes all you need is the ocean.

Chi-Town, Chicago, the Windy City

There’s many things I like: travel, cities, learning. In an unfortunate turn of reality, these great things often have to intersect with some things I do not like: large gatherings of people, meeting new people, and - dun dun dun - networking. Regardless i jumped at the chance to make my first work-related trip to the Forum on Education Abroad conference in Chicago earlier in the month. It seemed like a great idea when I booked, less-so when I first started the run of 12 hour days, but definitely improved immensely with the sun shining over a new city to explore (right after another 18 hours of work talk).

Chicago has a lot of similarities to NYC: architecture, street layout, dedicated obsession with pizza, a deep-seated love of their sports (and a hatred of Boston’s :) ) We spent a lot of time walking around Friday, checking out the public library and the city line.

We ate Chinese Bao and almost a whole deep-dish pizza. Oh, and Sprinkles cupcakes!

I was most looking forward to the Aquarium and it did not disappoint...except when the power failed after we waited over an hour and a half to get in! But we did get to see the beluga whales, otters (which are actually GIGANTIC) and the jellyfish special exhibition.  I was pretty sad I did not get to buy any awesome fishy souvenirs as the tills were all locked out sans power. We also checked out Macy’s Annual Flower show which was one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a department store.

To round out the weekend we went to the Drake Hotel for afternoon tea before boarding an ahead of schedule flight back home. Nothing makes a good trip even better than decent air travel.