A "Dry" Monday in Boston

The rain from Sunday stopped. It was to be a dry Monday. We peeked outside the front door of our brownstone home-away-from-home to check out the weather.

We were in the first and basement floor portions of 83 Appleton and it was really quite roomy.
Frank just had to duck his head to get in there!

The reason "dry" is in quotes is because we started the day with the Samuel Adams Brewery Tour, possibly Dan's most anticipated event of the trip. We took mass transit to the brewery, signed up for the noon tour, and were given Grumpy Monk labels as our tickets. While in the waiting room we tasted some spices that can be added to beer. The ones I remember were rose hips, nutmeg, and coriander.  I learned that coriander is the seed for cilantro. I never knew that!

Our ticket for the tour was a beer label.  Different tour times had different labels.

Since grain is the primary ingredient of beer (except for water, of course) the tour begins with sampling from three barrels of grains of different degrees of darkness. We were instructed to place a few grains in our mouth and chew them. The guide tells you how one has a fruity flavor, another a caramel toffee taste, another almost a coffee flavor and how each is the major component of either an ale or a lager, the two main beer types. Fruity and caramel were a large stretch of the imagination for me. The grain that went into the darker type beers actually tasted burnt to me even though it was described as espresso-like. I do not drink coffee so maybe espresso and burnt are one and the same. I am a fruit and caramel fan, though, and I was still skeptical of his flavor descriptions.

This is the grain tasting beginning of the brewery tour.

The Samuel Adams Brewery in Boston is a research facility and not a mass production plant. The brewing process was quite complicated to me with the tour guide throwing around a whole slew of chemistry terms. The time that the yeast is allowed to work is critical to too-sweet or just-right a flavor since it generates sugars. Exactly when the water is drained off has an effect on what components have been allowed to fall out of the mash solution as a sediment. Temperature is important too. It was all too much information too fast and I did not follow nor can I repeat most of it. Maybe I should have taken notes? Nah! But I can simply report with certainty that the copper vessels were pretty and impressively large. We also learned that the brewery workers are allowed to drink beer while on the job, in moderation, of course. Personally I think the bulk of the tour was just a pretense to get to the tasting room.

This room houses the brewing vessels.

Here we are in the tasting room. Pitchers of three different kinds of beer were passed around and we could fill our plastic cups to the brim. We were asked to notice the smell, the clarity, the foam head, and the flavor nuances of each. Dan seemed the happiest of us four. After I'd taken a sip from the partially filled cup I'd so gingerly poured myself, I hid my face so the tour guide would not see my grimace and then discretely poured my sample into Dan's cup. The guide asked for a show of hands of those who were tasting Sam Adams Beer for the first time. Dan insisted I raise my hand and he added that I had never tasted any beer before, ever. The tour guide declared "Yay. We popped her beer cherry!" With all that beer in abundance the mood was very informal.

In the tasting room, at last. For many, this is the climax of the tour.

The tour guide asked what I thought. I replied, "It's...," pausing to find a good non-insulting word to describe the fruits of this man's chosen profession, "it's... different." He quipped back, "Hey, that would make a great Sam Adams commercial". Then he deadpanned a guy pointing to a bottle of beer in his hand, stating in a monotone. "Buy Sam Adams Beer. It's different."

Sam Adam's Beer. It's different.

After the tour we went to the gift shop where Dan got a shirt and jacket with subtle Sam Adams references. The brewery actually offered an unlimited number of free post cards you could write to your friends and they would also cover the postage. I thought this was a generous gesture. Then we boarded the Party Bus and were off to a lunch at famous Doyle's Cafe. Doyle's is within walking distance of the brewery, but taking the Party Bus would be another experience. Packed with people who have just happily imbibed several plastic cups of beer, outfitted with a sparkling disco ball, and boisterously pumping Sweet Caroline out the speakers, the bus merrily trundles along the streets of Boston and its riders gaily sing along in full voice. Pedestrians along the way often chimed in. Why Sweet Caroline? The song is a Boston tradition. Sweet Caroline has been played in the middle of the 8th inning at every Fenway Park game since 2002.

Frank is ready to board the Party Bus to Doyle's. 

Dan and Carrie sat before us in the Party Bus. Frank and I were in the rear row,
just like we were in the Fenway Fanny Duck. Hmmmm. Is there a trend here?

Doyle's was a typical Boston pub with typical pub food. Dan turned in his Grumpy Monk label for a free glass of Sam Adams beer. He had to buy the beer, just the glass was free. But it is a special glass with a shape specially designed to keep the beer cold since you hold it at the relatively narrow base. The base also is molded with bumps to cause nucleation sites for the bubbles in the beer. The glass broadens upward from the base and then tapers inward to funnel the aroma to your nasal passages. And lastly, the flared rim holds just the right amount of foam.

There is a lot of science in the design of this glass.
And to think, Dan got it for free!

After lunch we set out for Boston Common and Boston Gardens. It was in Boston Commons during the holidays in our college days that I asked Frank where all the Christmas lights were plugged in. I remember fondly how we embarked on the adventure of tracing the path of the wires back to their source. Little did we know then we would be revisiting decades later with our son and his wife.

History is repeating itself a generation later as we visit the commons with Dan and Carrie.

We headed over the the Boston Gardens next. We only had to go to three out of the four corners to finally find the Make Way for Ducklings bronze statues modeled from the classic Robert McCloskey children's book of the same title.

Here I am with Mama Duck. The names of her eight babies are
Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack and Quack 

Frank and I sat on a nearby bench and enjoyed watching kids scrambling all over the statues. I looked down at our feet and noticed we were sitting on the Grandparents Bench. How fitting this was since within four days we would be in Oklahoma celebrating the first birthday of our first grandchild.

Frank are going toe to toe in this grandparent business!

The Swan Boats had be put away for the season and were not available for riding.

No, Frank, no! You really cannot get to those swan boats that way!

It was still fun seeing my two men posed under the Men of Boston monument.

Dan and Frank are admiring each other in front of
this monument dedicated to the Men of Boston.

It was getting late and the sun was setting but we had one more destination before nightfall. We set out to take the "T" to the end of the Green Line at the Lechmere stop. Just a few blocks from here was where Frank and I lived just after were married in 1975. The address of the house was 60 Otis Street, Cambridge, MA.

This was our nearest street corner. Many buildings have sprouted up around the area in the last 38 years.

At night from our apartment you could  hear the squeal of the trolly wheels on the rails as they made the tight turn. Dan and Carrie rode a similar trolley with Frank and me to view our first apartment.

The turn radius at this end of the line is reputed to be the smallest on the MBTA
and thus limits the car sizes that can go there.

We lived on the first floor in a one bedroom apartment with a living room, small office area, kitchen, and one bathroom, just off the kitchen. That bay window at street level in the front was our master bedroom. The bathroom was all the way at the back and you had to walk through the office area, the living room, and the kitchen to get to it. The rent was $200 a month and we brought home $250 a month. We would put a candle underneath the pipe that fed the toilet to keep it from freezing when it got really cold since the bathroom was in the corner of the building and thus had two outdoor walls. Our friends John and Sue lived on the third floor. In fact it was they who let us know of the vacancy in the building when we were searching for a place to live. We lived here in Cambridge for only one year before moving out to California. It was fun to revisit it and even more fun to share it with Dan and Carrie.

Frank and I spent our honeymoon year here at 60 Otis Street, Cambridge, MA.

It was a long day and so this was a very long post. Congratulations if you have read this far. We went back to our Appleton Street abode and rested a bit. We later topped off the evening by having a simple dinner at the Upper Crust pizzeria before going home and collapsing.

Once again the restaurant selection on Tremont Street did not fail us.
The pizza here was great and the atmosphere was quaint and fun.