Blogcation Redux Part 3: Massachusetts

Finally! The rest of the vacay:

So after our breakfast in Portland, we drove through all parts of Maine...and decided that after seeing roughly 4 small coastal towns in Maine, they all begin to look alike...

On our way to Boston, we ended up driving back through NH and stopped for lunch in Portsmouth, which reminded me of Portland, which reminded me a bit like Charleston. The downtown area had lots of privately owned trendy businesses. My favorite was Second Run Books, a used bookstore that had their walls covered with "things found in books," ranging from train tickets to Penn Station in NY to photos, love letters, newspaper clippings, and shopping lists. It's where I bought this book.

And what is apparently a common thread of New England, we found another public garden.

After eating a slice of delicious cake with coffee, we began to head down to Boston. Honestly.

We actually stayed in Cambridge, just across the river from Boston. I liked this because it was between MIT and Harvard. We were surrounded by brains.

How to describe Boston? It's like a clean Philadelphia (which I'm not sure says much as I believe any city is cleaner the Philadelphia (aka Philth-adelphia). We walked parts of the Freedom Trail, lots of American History, historic graveyards, more seafood, and great Italian food. We were pretty disappointed in the hyped up Faneuil Hall-this was a glorified tourist trap....I imagined something more along the lines of the market at Grand Central Station in NY, not a high priced fast food hall with chain stores like the Gap.

We did take a swan boat tour....

The bookstores in Cambridge though...oh. my. goodness. My new fantasy? to be locked in the The Harvard Coop or the The Harvard Bookstore. Guess I'll have to look into grad school sooner than later ;)