Boston Saga, Part 4: From Asia to Italy

Honor and I spent Friday afternoon exploring Cambridge and poking around some of the shops. We had lunch at a nice little Chinese restaurant called Hong Kong (aka "The Kong"). The food was really good, and there was plenty of it. Later that night we had Indian food at a place called The Bombay Club. Again we were served a large quantity of excellent food.

After sleeping in on Saturday (a pleasure in which we law students don't get to indulge too often), we set off to explore some of Boston. First we visited Chinatown, where we had dim sum at Chau Chow City (why is it that practically every other Chinese restaurant feels obligated to make a bad pun with its name?). I've had dim sum on several occasions, but never had I been responsible for ordering the food. For anyone's who's not done dim sum before, you have to understand that this is not your typical dining experience. You don't get menus; instead, waiters/waitresses come by with carts of different small dishes, and you pick out what you want. I recognized a few things from prior dim sum outings, but I was mostly flying blind. Still, Honor and I did pretty well. Notable highlights: the sticky rice and meat cooked in lotus leafs, steamed pork dumplings, and red bean buns. Disappointment: shrimp still in their shells, with all legs still attached.

Saturday started out as cold and drizzly. The weather only got worse as the day progressed. We spent most of the afternoon ducking in and out of shops. In Chinatown, Honor and I visited a Chinese grocery store (she'd never been in one before) and a kitschy little store that sold the cheesy knick knacks that you usually only see in Chinese restaurants. When we got downtown, we went to a few clothing stores where Honor looked for a new coat. Alas, we weren't able to find anything to her liking.

Then it was off to the North End and Little Italy. Along the way, we experienced the wind tunnel known as Congress Street. The combination of wind, rain, and cold was absolutely brutal. We stopped at a gift shop along the Freedom Trail to get our bearings and thaw out a bit. Unlike the micro mini umbrella Honor had purchased* (generally ineffective against the typhoon conditions of Congress Street), the laminated (and thus, rain-proof) map of Boston proved to be an excellent investment.

We continued our trek to the North End and after braving more of the wind, rain, and all-around lousy weather, we found ourselves in Little Italy. We decided to warm up and dry out a bit in an Italian coffee shop. We sipped our coffee, chatted, and had a good time. Eventually the coffee shop began filling up, and we decided to free up a table and leave. We weren't quite ready to have dinner yet, so we perused a CVS for a little while.

Our original plan was to have dinner at Pomodoro, but it was really crowded and there were people waiting outside in the rain for a table. So we went down the street a bit and had dinner at Piccola Venezia instead. We were told it would be a half hour wait, but at least there were some open seats indoors where we could wait. We only had to wait for fifteen minutes before a table opened up. The food was very good, but the portions were large (and we were still a bit full from the dim sum), so we took a good portion of our dinners home in boxes.

Our trek home was, if anything, colder, wetter, and windier than anything we had experienced all day. By the time we got home, we felt a glass of wine would really hit the spot. But in opening a bottle of Spanish wine, the corkscrew broke off in the wine cork. I've never seen anything like it. After about half an hour (maybe longer) of chipping away, we finally got to the wine. Thankfully, the wine was very good and worth the effort.

Sunday morning was fairly uneventful. I retrieved my wallet, and Honor and I had a light breakfast in Harvard Square. We said our goodbyes, and I boarded to subway back to South Station to catch the train back to South Bend.

*I confess that I more or less recommended buying the small umbrella. I figured it would fit in her law school bag better (her last umbrella had fallen out of one of the side pockets). Plus it was kind of cute. Anyway, I must admit that it was not one of my better suggestions.