Walk with us

It’s not really a shopping day today.  Well, would you want to go and pay full price again after a weekend of heavy discounts?  So, join us on our visit to the new American Wing of the Museum of Fine Arts instead.  It’s only just opened a couple of weeks ago, so is still pretty “hot”.

Over the weekend, the hotel has been decorated and we’ll admire the tree as we pass by.  It’s the same one with the same decorations as last time here, so it must be on its third outing.  Still looks ok, though.

Our hotel is connected to the shopping mall by a covered walkway and right at the other end is Au Bon Pain, breakfast place of choice when we are lacking The Red Flame, our favourite breakfast place in NYC.

Not too busy today, we enjoy our apple and cinnamon oatmeal and assorted pastries!

Walking through the mall, we pass by a favourite shop and admire Eileen’s style which suits me very well.  I’ve already relieved her of a couple of things this trip and am sorely tempted by another one.  We’ll see.  Eileen doesn’t discount, so there are seldom bargains to be had.

Next door is Williams Sonoma which isn’t open yet but which looks as lovely as always.  Such choice here.

Finally, in this part of the mall, there’s another chance to look at the Tiffany windows which are beautifully made from printed paper, book pages possibly.

From here, there’s another covered bridge over to the other part of the Mall, the Prudential Center.  So few people here today – over the weekend, this walkway has been heaving with shoppers.

As we look up through the glass roof at the skyscraper beyond, I’m approached by a security guard who smiles sweetly and gently advises me that taking photos of tall buildings isn’t recommended.  I apologise, he smiles again and moves on to advise the next person.

We rather like the oversized decorations in this mall, once again, remembering them from two years ago.

From here, it’s out onto the street and a breath of cold, morning air.  Huntington Avenue is quiet as we walk as briskly as we can under the clear blue sky.

The wind whips round the empty plaza in front of the Christian Science Center

Soon, we’re back at Symphony Hall, where we came on Saturday evening to hear that great concert.

Huntington then opens up and becomes an avenue of Universities and colleges.  Here, the front of Northeastern University – a game of wiffle ball, anyone?

The T – Boston’s subway system – comes up onto the surface around here and runs down the centre of the road.  Walking along here in the sunshine is pleasant and we’re glad we took the exercise rather than ride.

I admire the patterns set into the road to mark pedestrian crossing areas as we pass by.  Every junction along here is marked out like this, some worn away from heavy traffic.

Then, at last, we are here, standing in front of the Museum of Fine Arts.  I love the sculpture which stands outside and on this sunny morning, the pose of the native american horseman was perfect.  We went and sat on the low wall outside the entrance and basked in the sunshine ourselves for five minutes until the doors opened at 10am.

Join me inside the new Art of the Americas wing in my next post!

35 down, 15 to go

US states, that is.

Kerching!

For the record, today we scored Connecticut, which brings my total to 35 states and Mark’s to 34, because of Wisconsin.  The thing is, we have now got all of the “easy” states; the whole of the east and west coasts are complete and there remains just the wide expanse of the mid-west.

The north east corner of Connecticut, where we explored today, is beautifully rural, rolling countryside.  We very much enjoyed a day out from the city and the clear sunny weather showed the area off to best advantage. The names on the signposts were entertaining, too – the sign above was spotted in (another) Brooklyn.

Under a cloudless blue sky

It’s chilly but invigorating.  Just the right weather to be popping in and out of shops.  Perfect.

The thing is, many of them are such a visual feast, that even if no purchases are made, it’s still fun.  Even more so, now the staff in Anthropologie don’t get agitated at the sight of a camera any more.

We love the way the stores here make an effort to spruce up the outside too.

With a folklore theme going on inside, I’m enjoying capturing some images ready for my Christmas journal which I’ll begin in a few days time.

Enjoying a comforting hot drink in Starbucks (will it be salt caramel chocolate or peppermint mocha this time?…yum!) we make one of those chance enounters we love.  The chap standing behind me waiting for our drinks recognises my accent and comes over to Mark to begin a conversation.  We discover he’s a musician on his way to play the matinee of the Nutcracker with the ballet.  When we tell him we’re going to the Symphony this evening, he laughs and says that he also plays with the BSO – he’s a percussionist.  Having discussed the programme, we look forward to seeing him on stage, feeling a connection with the orchestra in the same way we do at Symphony Hall back home.

 

It was a fine concert and we enjoyed it greatly.  Disappointing though, how the audience began to leave almost as soon as the last note had been played.  Andris would have held that magical silent moment so much longer…

Here we are again, then…

This pre-Christmas shopping jaunt has become a bit of a tradition for us.  The first year, we snook away in the depths of a miserable November, hoping for a little lightness as Mummy failed to recover as hoped from her stroke.  We took advantage of remarkably good prices for flights, treating ourselves to the luxury of Upper Class for the first time.  We were amazed to find few people travelling that weekend because of the Thanksgiving holiday, cheap hotel rooms for the same reason and unbelievably deep discounts on top of discounts in the shops.  The start of the Christmas season in the USA is so delightful, too.

It was a little dreary when we arrived yesterday but the forecast is good and from reading emails from friends back home, considerably warmer here than there.  Today, sunshine is forecast with a chill wind, tomorrow the wind will drop, we’re told, and it will be a glorious day.  We’ll see…

Of course, it’s warm in the shops, so warm last evening, that people were wearing T shirts, making us look very strange wrapped up in coats and scarves.  We took advantage of some of those offers, after all, 30% off the whole purchase in my favourite store just couldn’t be refused.  There was 40% off everything in the shop opposite too, where lovely twinkly cashmere gloves and scarves were in the window, tempting me in.

I can see, it’s going to be a fun day today!

Meanwhile, Edward’s at home, holding the fort and driving himself in my car to a party tonight.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the snow holds off.

Late to the party, again

To the film party this time.

We don’t go to the cinema often and tend to store up lists of films we look forward to watching on a flight somewhere.  Those which we really, really want to see, we’ll get on DVD if they don’t show up along the way courtesy of BA or whoever.  Others fall by the wayside as we forget all about them until they turn up on TV years later.

One film was on our list, because it was premiered when we were in New York this Summer and we’d read good things about it.  But it had slipped our mind until we looked through the schedules today, when we boarded our flight to Boston for our annual pre-Christmas shopping trip.

Despicable Me is possibly the best film we’ve watched in ages.  We thought it was even better than Up – possibly because it didn’t have that schmaltzy, sentimental side to the story.  The characterisations were terrific, the small details so clever (we must have missed so many, we really want to see it again).  Quite why we didn’t rush to the cinema to see it when it first came out, I have no idea…but if we had, then our flight today wouldn’t have been anything like as much fun!