Jet lag may have worked in our favor this morning – we had a training session at the JCC at 7:30am, but it was easy to get up early enough to make it! Being in bed by 10pm last night might have helped, too.

We think we booked our flights for our Douro River cruise next year – we’re booking the air through the cruise line, which means that there’s a lag between their offering us an itinerary and our being able to accept it. Normally, that’s not a problem, but lots of people seem to be planning travel – twice, we found out that the fare they were offering had sold out by the time we accepted it. The third time seems to have been the charm, though; the credit card got charged. Our Travel Agent is in Europe, so it’ll be tomorrow before we get the final confirmation from him, but it looks promising.

And Subaru sent me a “not a recall” notice today. Apparently, there’s a problem that can keep you from being able to remove the key from the lock in certain rare circumstances; they’ll fix it for free for eight years after buying the car. All well and good. Except that my car has keyless ignition, so there’s no chance of having the key stuck in the lock; it never leaves my pocket. The notice had the correct VIN for my car; you’d think their system would know that there isn’t a key to get stuck, right?

We flew home on United; it was the first time I’d flown them in quite a while (even pre-pandemic). We were in First Class, so we were in Boarding Group 1. I was amused that there were five “pre-boarding” groups called before Group 1! United has only recently started serving hot meals in domestic First Class; they had the same choices on both legs, a chicken breast meal or an vegetarian ragu. We tried one on each leg; I slightly preferred the chicken, but they were both acceptable.

The flights were unremarkable, uneventful, and arrived early. I even got a view of Mono Lake.

All in all, a good day, though it doesn’t make for a very interesting blog entry!

It’s nice having a Boston local as a guide. Today, Jeff suggested something that I thought was far too much of a tourist trap to consider when I saw it on business trips – no, not the “Cheers Pub”, but The Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum. It was a lot of fun; we started with a mini Town Meeting to discuss the Tea Problem, then threw cases of tea off the ship, watched a holographic history show, and finished at Abigail’s Tea Room, where we had scones and all the tea we could drink (five varieties, all of which had been thrown into the Harbor in 1773). Yes, it is touristy, but it’s done well – I’d go back in a couple of years.

After the tea and scones, we needed some exercise before lunch, so we walked back to the hotel; lunch was at Bon Me on Stuart Street. It was OK, but not thrilling.

We then went to the Mapparium; Diane and I had been there a few years ago, but they’d changed the narration. Of course, they hadn’t changed the globe itself – it still shows the world in 1935. Seeing the globe from the inside and at large scale is an interesting experience, too. The Mapparium is now part of a bigger exhibit, but we didn’t have time to see the rest of it on this trip.

Instead, we walked over to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and spent the rest of the afternoon there. None of us had been there before, and we barely had time to visit all of the rooms before the museum closed at 5pm. The place is crammed full of art – all acquired by Isabella herself (her will specified that no art should be acquired or disposed of after her death). She didn’t put labels on the artwork, and the trustees have continued that practice, which meant that I needed to look at my phone a lot if I wanted to know what I was seeing – on the other hand, it made it easier to concentrate on the art if I wanted to do that. The museum reminded me of the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia – quirky and a reflection of the founder.

Our friend Lindy had recommended we eat at Riccardo’s in the North End, so that was where we went for dinner – she was right. The food was good, the service friendly and well-paced, and Diane and I liked our martinis just fine.

We walked back to the Westin to drop off our coats, then we took a hike through Copley Place and Prudential Center to burn off some of dinner. We’ve been doing a lot of walking on this trip, but today was the high point; I have just under 30,000 steps and Diane is not far behind.

Jeff has headed back to his place; he’s working tomorrow and we have a morning flight, so we won’t see him again on this trip (unless something odd happens like it did in August). sigh

Jeff suggested we go to Taza Chocolate today for a tasting and tour – and wouldn’t you know it, they also sold chocolate there, too!

The tour started in the Cocoa Classroom with tastes of three of their discs (cinnamon, guajillo chili, and vanilla) and a presentation on how they source and process their chocolate. We were encouraged to take notes on the chocolates, too.

They showed us the production rooms, but nothing was happening because it was Sunday; I took photos of the equipment, but they’re not exciting. We got to taste cocoa nibs (small quantities suffice), 100% cocoa chocolate (small quantities suffice), and three varieties of 70% cocoa chocolate (disk, bar, and couverture chocolate) – it was interesting to see how different the three varieties were because of their texture.

That concluded the formal part of the tasting, but then we were encouraged to try whatever looked interesting (and to buy what we liked). I didn’t take careful notes of what I tried, but I did come away with a bagful of bars and discs for later.

After that, we wanted to go to the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the Senate at UMass. Jeff had looked on Google to check their hours and address; we weren’t near the T, so we took a Lyft. The driver dropped us at the address, which was just inside the campus – we had to walk another ¾ mile to get to the Institute itself. It was closed – they’re only offering group tours, and only on weekdays. Jeff took a picture of the sign, submitted it as a correction to Google, and they’d updated their entry within two minutes – the next people will benefit from his diligence.

Jeff had brought his Boston walks book with him, and it had a walking route around Columbia Point, which is the site of the Institute, the JFK Library (only open for pre-booked tours), the Commonwealth Archives (not open today), and UMass itself. We took the walk and enjoyed the scenery.

We had a late lunch at McKenna’s Cafe, getting in just before they stopped taking orders for the day. From there, we took an Uber to the Museum of Fine Arts for the rest of the afternoon – we only had time for the Egyptian galleries, but that was well worth the price of admission (especially since we got one free ticket through Bank of America’s “Museums on Us” program!).

There was even a little Hebrew in the Egyptian gallery – the text for this seal is inscribed in Hebrew: “Belonging to Elyaqin, servant of the king.” If I squint VERY hard, I can sort of see מלך (“king”) on the bottom row, but I could well be wrong.

That late lunch meant we didn’t want a real dinner, so we went to Amorino again for gelato and macarons. Chocolate played a part, of course.

We ended the day by watching a very Boston movie, Good Will Hunting, again at Jeff’s suggestion. It didn’t compare to Boston Accent, but it tried.

We tried something different today – we rode the Blue Line, which mostly serves East Boston. Jeff says he’d never ridden it deliberately since moving here at the beginning of 2016, and I don’t think I’d ever been on it in my many trips to Boston.

Jeff had a book with various Boston walks; there were two in East Boston, and we took the one starting in Maverick Square.

The walk took us from Maverick Square to Lo Presti Park, part of the Harborwalk. The park had very nice views of Boston Harbor, including the USS Constitution, which we’d been on just three months earlier.

We continued along the Harborwalk – some of the sights in Jeff’s book were gone, replaced by modern apartments and condos taking advantage of the views.

Piers Park was a nice stop along the way – we visited its central pavilion, which talked about the various cultures who had contributed to the East Boston population.

Lunch was at Seabiscuit in the Boston Shipyard; they specialize in Aussie meat pies, which I enjoyed.

After lunch, we were faced with a choice – follow the tour in the book, which would involve hiking another ¾ mile to the Hyatt Regency and turning around there, or just going back to Maverick Square and taking the T elsewhere.

We bid an early farewell to East Boston and took the Blue Line to the Orange Line to the Red Line to Harvard, where we explored the Harvard Art Museums for an hour or so (I’d spent half of the ride looking at a poster from them!) before going to Jeff’s house for a small pizza party he and his housemates were hosting.

And then it was back to our hotel – I didn’t think I’d walked enough, so we took a grand tour of Copley Place and Prudential Center before calling it a night. I was surprised to find that the stores in the malls mostly closed at 7 or 8 – fortunately, all we wanted was a walk, so it didn’t matter. I bet they stayed open longer 600 days ago!