Have returned from an almost two week trip to Boston to meet my grandchild. Managed to wave to her, more or less. Managed to be sick the whole time I was there. First serious gastrointestinal problems since we moved ummmm surfaced on the trip to Boston. They lasted más o menos four days. On the fifth day, I got a cold from hell: an Afghanistani cold, my family said, since one member had come back from a job in Afghanistan with it and had spread it around to some of the others. Stayed sacked out on and off on the family member’s couch for five days.
Good things:
Managed to see the baby across a crowded room – well, twice, across dining tables. She is of course adorable and seemed very content in the arms of her doting and gentle parents.
Managed to see her 93 year old great grandfather see her for the first time. Also overwhelmed with The Cold, he could not hold her either, but he said, smiling, “I am very content. Life goes on.”
I managed to spend a lot of time with my son. We walked all over Boston, ate at fish restaurants (and one tex-mex place, I have to confess) and sat on a bench and just watched Boston Harbor for quite a while..
Got to spend a day with my very busy daughter. We shopped some and ate at a G and G, a favorite of ours. She took me to a store which sold used CDs and DVDs (not piratas) where I bought some without guilt. And we roamed the aisles of Target. Got getta get some of that stuff in. I can't deny my U.S. heritage completely.
Got to see, for the first time in my life, Walden Pond and Concord. More about them later.
Bad things:
Didn’t feel so great a fair amount of the time.
Found out that my hotel reservations at a (more or less) moderately priced hotel weren’t good through the last night. I suspect it’s because my son made the reservations at quite a good price and the onslaught of biotech people (20,000) for an international conference had doubled rates and the hotel could make a good deal more off them than me. Cynical me.
So I ended up in The Bostonian, at 400 + dollars for a night. This is a hotel across from Quincy Market, unassuming on the outside – I had never even noticed it. It is a beautifully maintained hotel in a style I would call 1950’s Regency. Updates included a really nice Jacuzzi in the bathroom which I did indeed enjoy. Got a free upgrade to a junior suite – I suspect (cynical me) because they needed the two beds in the room I originally had booked and the jr suite had only a kingsize. Kind of made me think of a Jaguar: you didn’t really get a lot more for your money: you got the opportunity to spend more of your money than you would on a lower priced car -- or room. The mini-bar was stacked to overflowing, treats you of course had to pay for overflowed a basket. God only knows what it would have cost to light a fire in the suite’s fireplace. No free local calls, no free internet. Weren’t allowed to carry your own bags. And to add insult to injury, someone had forgotten to put the coffee pot and filter holder in the room’s coffee pot. I didn’t ask for it: I’m sure it would have been another tip. I went across the street and got coffee at Starbucks.
But, yes, it was kind of fun for a night. More fun if mi esposo had been there with me. More fun if he were with me and we spent the money doing other things. Or saved some of it. He's better at that than I am.