Pizza And Pictures From Boston

Looking back a week to our Boston stay early this vacation, I remember with fondness a pizza lunch we enjoyed after Phillip and Van walked us across town. The forced March would have been too much for Cheyenne so she stayed, disconsolate, in the apartment. I have to keep reminding myself she's 13 years old and she needs her rest.

Pizza for lunch was proposed with great enthusiasm, as though a treat. I was sceptical, in my world pizza is a fall back position. Who doesn't like pizza but it's like having ice cream for lunch to me, a single flavor treat spun into a meal. But hey the walk will burn the calories, right?

Apparently Regina's Pizzeria is a Boston institution in the Italian quarter and it survived the last Depression going on to thrive through this one it seems. The decor is pure Italian American simplicity, thick brown paint, simple furniture, no room to swing a dead cat, no romance except for the all important romance of history and survival. So far so good.

Phillip (with the glasses) is a third generation Italian immigrant and he knows real Italian pizza and he kept going on about this stuff like it really was special it was hot outdoors so air conditioning, buckets of water and pitchers of Peroni light Italian lager at my request started the process of reviving us. I am told the line to get in this place frequently winds around the block; that we had to wait at all seemed odd to me. Standing in line for five minutes for mere pizza was a first!

Regina Pizzeria - Boston's best pizza since 1926 they promote themselves as the Best so they had something to live up to, and I have to say it really was superb.

The crust was thin and firm, toasted by the fire but not burned, crisp and chewy, an apparent impossibility. The vegetables were cut large in proper quantity and not overwhelming the crust with water. Everything was full of flavor, this was no Sysco delivered food service product. I am getting fed up with paying to eat out and finding cheap ingredients from a local warehouse on my plate tarted up with sugar salt and fat. This stuff was good. I wanted more.

This was a lunch that called for something sweet. Ice cream sounded right on a hot Boston day...

...but Phillip the Wop had other and much much better ideas. My hat is off to him because he and Van never led us astray in this delightful city.

 

Modern Pastry looks like an Italian bakery and it delivers. I grew up in Italy with memories of family gatherings around a lunch table loaded with pretty boxes tied up with ribbon filled with stuff like this.

 

I was overwhelmed but I ended up getting a lobster tail. Not what you think, this is a hard crust filled with cream, ricotta and semolina. Amazing. Huge. To be shared.

I always go with what I don't know but I scored on this monster. Better than the cannoli, absurdly proportioned it was better than any I cream with lots of left overs to share during a card game that evening.

They also make nougat called torrone and it tasted exactly as I used to have it as a kid. Phillip knows his Italian stuff.

A great day with a great stroll through a great city.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Harvard Square, Cambridge, a disappointment, nothing to write home about.

 

But we found an interesting lunch...

...when my wife and I were out alone on Hubway bicycles.

North African food of fond memory.

Mint tea. No sugar lump to hold between your teeth, though.

Couscous, vegetables, lamb sausages. Good stuff.

 

A nice find before the ride back across the Charles River.

 

 

 

 

Boston seems a very livable town. At least it does in these rarified heights...on vacation!

 

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Phillip And Van's Boston

Phillip and Van lived in Key West for a while in a cottage in Old Town but it didn't take. Phillip worked in the schools and Van is a retired archivist and they missed their friends and their culture and their seasons Up North. They've been together 38 years moving around, buying and selling homes, not flipping but enjoying the challenge of making a space a home, getting bored and moving on. Van (L) is a native of Maine while Phillip (in the Provincetown t shirt) is from the Mid West, and they've been in Boston two years, which means its time to move on and they are eyeing a shift to Portland, Maine for a more laid back lifestyle. That would be move 28 which blows my mind, as I have just moved for the first time in a decade...

Cheyenne likes their decorating style and promptly made herself at home.

Their space is small but it's in the Beacon Hill neighborhood which is where the money lives. And they have a birds eye view of the riverside park where the Boston Pops were going to celebrate the Fourth in an open air concert. Hurricane Arthur made other plans and the last we heard the concert was supposed to take place last night to avoid the storm. We got out early as traffic was supposed to be a mess as preparations ramped up. Fourth of July is one of my favorite holidays but spending it on the road is a bit of a drag. I had hoped we might get to Canada and pretend nothing was happening, but New Brunswick is just too far away.

The boys love to walk and we took a couple of urban hikes enjoying the "Emerald Necklace" string of parks created by Frederick Law Olmsted and much revered by Van and Phillip. You can walk almost the entire way across the city in shady strip of manicured woodland. It's quite lovely.

Our destination was the Prudential building with an oddly named restaurant, the Top of the Hub, on the 52nd floor, far above the shopping mall below.

I never feel quite comfortable in these places especially when they are well attended like this one.

We ate absurdly well, a series of tapas style plates, calamari, mussels, risotto balls and hot dog sliders(!) washed down with cocktails. It was very decadent.

Then we strolled the top floor and checked the sights, the Emerald Necklace winding its way across the city, Fenway Park baseball field illuminated for the game being shown on the TV bar across the room, the offshore islands dotted by white sailboats in the sunset.

The next day our walk wound across the entire city, through the ancient streets on the hill, past John Kerry's home, which Van pointed out with glee, but it looked like a regular town home to me. We should all marry inherited wealth as he did. I checked out this cobblestone alley but nixed it - hard to get a scooter down that!

Another landmark where Steve McQueen shot the Thomas Crowne Affair...I am not much for movie locations, I feel they spoil the mystery, but Hollywood's choices validate places for lots of people.

A Key West chicken loose in Boston disfiguring a perfect street?

Coming down the hill we passed the statehouse. Massachusetts is unusual in that it's largest and most prominent city is also the state capital. However this is all we saw as they had a fence up all the way round to keep our democracy safe. I miss the good old days of brash self confidence instead of the modern cowering before threats by terrorists and nutters.

Boston is all bricks, steep hills and history. Somewhere past the financial district we barely noticed the place where Benjamin Franklin was baptized. I was drowning in stuff to see everywhere.

Public notices are quite polite especially considering this is a town where eye contact and public manners are unknown.

Above we see a vast shallow paddling pool and below adults sitting out on park benches, a popular passive pastime in this city that lives through brutal winters.

Costume people shake up the street scenes. Revolutionary Boston is a big deal in tourist areas. My favorite reality check, A Few Bloody Noses: The Realities and Mythologies of the American Revolution is probably a safer bet than the propagation of the palatable alternative reality put about for casual tourists.

Elizabeth Peabody had her business here and they still sell books in this place.

Unlike so many American cities Boston lives it's history, not with fanfare like New Orleans or reserve like Charleston, but simply as a daily fact of life. I like this attitude very much. Key West harps on the connection to Ernest Hemingway ad nauseam but Boston has an equivalent figure on each street corner it seems like. Too many to flaunt all of them all the time.

The financial district could be anywhere...

...but in the middle we find this modest, perfectly proportioned building, unprotected against terrorist attack. This is the Commonwealth's original state house. Built at a time when democracy in America meant free access to lawmakers. Happy day.

This ancient street we rushed down barely giving me time to snap a picture, never mind revel in, houses the oldest tavern in the US, still operating, and the pub where Revolutionary conspirators met. I wanted to pause and enjoy this smattering of the past still extant, able to recreate the sense of the time with a little imagination.

Our destination was more important than all that history crap: Regina's Pizzeria.

Best pizza ever the boys said. We'll see.

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