"Ride the Lightning" (full album) - Metallica

Monday, July 02, 2007

Harvard & Legal Seafoods

Day 2 in Cambridge...While on our way to the T Station, I saw this...
Okay...kinda sacrilegious...Right behind it was a local breakfast spot, Carberry's :
I was bummed that this place closed! Last time we visited, we went there for Japanese snacks!

The stairwell at Thane's - Vertigo Lite.
Some building near his place. We dont' have a lot of old three story-type building here in San Diego. Well, maybe in parts of old downtown or the Mission Hills area, but three story homes are not very common.
The T Station @ Central.
The Statue of Three Lies or the John Harvard Statue. Click on the link to find out the three "lies". I rubbed his left foot which is tradition. Kind of like rubbing the nose of Rickover's bust at The US Naval Academy at Annapolis (which I've done), or better yet, Bill the Goat's testicular region (the statue that is!)!
We pahked ah cah in Hah-vahd yahd!

Lots of pretty brick buildings!
This is Memorial Hall, a beautiful church that was recently rebuilt in the 1950's.

The front door of Memorial Hall.
More brick builidngs on campus...
There's Dunkin' Donuts everywhere in Boston! I think there's only 2 places in S.D. This particular one was down in a T station.
Legal Seafoods, our lunchtime destination! This is on Park Place, near Boston Commons.

Blurry - I didn't use the flash!
My mixed greens salad with raspberry vinaigrette (which I didn't eat) on the side.
Our rolls & butter -yeah, exciting stuff.
Bert's clam chowder...if it's good enough for the Presidents' inaugurations, it's good enough for us! You have two choices, a cup or a bowl - this is obviously the bowl with a lot of black pepper!
TC's entree: rice pilaf with grapes and popcorn shrimp:
My entree also came with a cup of clam chowder, which I shared with TC. It was quite creamy with tiny bits of potatoes and a lot of clam meat.
My disappointing lunch special, the Thai Shrimp wrap. I barely touched it. It was so doused in peanut sauce that my taste buds were rendered useless. I thought the fries were overkill.
Bert's crab cake (notice 'singular') with mixed greens salad. There was a slightly spicy aioli sauce squiggled on the plate. The crab meat was the good kind, the backfin part (more meaty chunks) not the stringy and crappy claw meat.

I forgot what street this is on, but it's pretty close to the restaurant. This was a statue of Lincoln commemorating the freeing of the slaves.
Although it had rained earlier that day (all of us had umbrella's in tow), the sun was out and shining after our seafood lunch. We headed for the Boston Public Garden:
Quite picturesque:
The Swan Boats looked so lonely just parked there on the lake. Because of the rain, they were not in use that day.

A lovely bed of alliums just off to the side of the bridge which crosses the pond at it's narrowest point.
Here's that bridge I mentioned previously. Looking on the web, it is described as the world's smallest suspension bridge, built in 1867. Somehow, I don't think it's really a suspension bridge, but it just looks like one.
The little "island" in the middle of the pond, the home of Mr. and Mrs. Mallard and their brood of ducklings from the beloved children's classic "Make Way for Ducklings":
A narrow view of Beacon Street from Boston Commons:
One of the frog statues near "Tadpole's Playground", a childrens' play area: One of the busy side streets off of Boylston Street:
Thane had a night out with his co-workers, so we headed off into Central Square by ourselves. We went to a Thai place he recommended, Pepper Sky - Thai Sensation . This was my papaya salad. What was missing were the tiny dried shrimps. It was pleasant but could have used more peppers to spice it up a bit.
This photo should have come BEFORE the papaya salad but I was too lazy to go in and fix it through the Edit HTML mode.
Our side order of sticky rice - yeah, a big old block of it!
My fresh spring roll appetizer with peanut dipping sauce:
TC's run of the mill fried rice with shrimp & assorted mixed seafood:
Bert's pad thai with shrimp & chicken:
Now that the big dinner party next to us was gone, I snapped a photo of this side of the joint, which was pretty small. We were lucky to even snag a table. I thought the food was average and not spectacular. We took the leftovers home for breakfast the next day.
Kinda strange to see a Christmas decoration in June!

Cambridge & Koreana

We arrived early evening in Boston on Tuesday June 19th. Thane was kind enough to pick us up at the airport after work. It was but a short ride to his place in Cambridge, just across the Charles River from the charming city of Boston.
View from his car...
Thane's place - We're on the third floor. His street is a cul de sac, just a few steps away from a T station, a Whole Foods Market and...
this place, Koreana...where we had our dinner that night. If you click on the link, our table was on the far left, just one table shy of the corner. That's a back shot of our very good friend, Thane of the Universe.According to Thane, the restaurant was recently remodeled. He swore he took us there last time, but it turned out it was Shilla, a Korean restaurant in the Harvard area. The interior was very elegant, clean lined with inconspicuous gas grills on the tables. I didn't notice them at first as they seemed rather small and seemed to blend in with the tables.We got our usual - beef bulgogi & jumullook (spelled as 'jumulrook' at Buga) along with an order of chapchae noodles.
The panchan (counterclockwise from the top): beansprouts, rice wrappers, lightly dressed lettuce leaves, sweet potatoes, kimchee, seaweed salad & shredded green onions with red cabbage. I liked the sweet potatoes the best!
Chapchae noodles - of which there wasn't nearly enough noodles as I would have liked!
We were so hungry, we got another order of bulgogi & jumullook.
The restaurant served their lettuce leaves in a basket. Nice touch! There were two dipping sauces for the jumullook along with sliced peppers and raw garlic.
Round two:

To end the meal, their sweet cinammon tea with a floating pine nut. Much sweeter than Buga's version.
Ack! Blurry photo!
It was a nice evening - not too warm or cold. Plus it was handy having Thane's place nearby. We were thankful to him for letting us crash at his place. By the way, his toilet has an added on "water cleansing" feature, which I didn't really use, but Bert utilized. Bert's sister has an actual bidet (which is separate from her actual toilet) and the water bubbles up your butt and you can control the volume of water as well as the temperature. With Thane's, it shoots a stream of water in your nether regions and the water is kind of cold.

Sunday, July 01, 2007

Our Anniversary & Canada Day

First of all, Happy Canada Day to Chrissy from Manitoulin!

This photo was taken during our trip to Seattle/Vancouver back in 2005. I believe this was an army surplus store. We spent our 10 year anniversary in Vancouver. I thought this was quite interesting! We also saw many people dressed up in red & white, or sporting maple leaf patterned clothing, including one woman who wore a maple leaf bandanna tied creatively around her boobs!

It's our 12 year wedding anniversary today! We had lunch at Terra in Hillcrest - will post photos later!