Saturday of Wedding Week: Faneuil Hall

I really wanted to show Adam's family and friends around Boston.  Other than their arrival at Logan International, they'd never been.  It was pretty cool walking through Salem with “The UK clan” in tow and then waiting for the train to arrive.  Adam and I hadn’t done it that often ourselves (I’d caught it from Salem just as often as he had) so it was still sort of a novelty even to us!  Plus I made sure to drink in the beautiful weather we were still lucky enough to enjoy.  And appreciate the fact that I was learning a new part of Salem.  I felt a little sad knowing that after the wedding was over, I wouldn’t be making this walk again.  But we’d pass fairly close by on the way home from the beach, so I could take some solace in that.

Once we arrived we went to Faneuil Hall, and needed to walk up and down 2 or 3 times for everyone to choose their meal.  It was pretty overwhelming!  Unfortunately it was so busy on this warm weekend that we didn’t get to sit at a table, but we made due.  And my lobster roll and clam chowder from Boston Chowda Co was perfect.

We looked around the stalls within the building and found homemade soap for Faye’s bridesmaid gift.  I saw a hat (well, headband) I liked.  Adam said it looked cute so I asked, “buy it for me?”  And he did!  I got lots of compliments on it.

We went outdoors to more shops, the biggest hit being Newbury Comics.  Aled saw a, um, I think he called it a Companion Cube Cookie Jar which was modeled after an item in Portal.  He hated to leave it behind but knew it would be too heavy to bring home.

Eventually we decided to move on, and I thought I saw the Prudential Center and suggested we walk to it.  That was a mistake.  Wrong building.  But the walk over, in Aled, Sarah, and my eyes, was great!  It was perfect walking weather, not too cold for February, and blue sunny skies.  And we passed by so much fantastic architecture.  I enjoyed watching their delight.

Eventually we gave up and looked for a subway, learned we were in the wrong one, went in the right one, and Sarah got her card stuck in the machine.  Adam’s parents tried to find an attendant but communications were unsuccessful and in the end they bought a new card.  I felt silly for a few reasons at this point.  First, we bought the more expensive tickets instead of the card.  Second, though no one including me said so, I realized after we should have just passed our own card back and forth to her.  If we were given any trouble, we could have explained about her jammed card.  Rats.

So we got to the Prue, and it was locked up.  Once again I felt silly.  I said to Adam, we looked together, I’m sure this was it, but he was not happy.  I said we should walk around the building, and at that point we saw the Copley building, which was what we really wanted.  Turns out it connects to the Hynnes Convention Center; that was what we wanted.  Though I still insisted it connects to the Prue also (and was later vindicated on our honeymoon when Adam and I used the sky bridge that connected the two).

We window shopped a little, but were lagging.  They wanted a drink so I brought them back down to Au Bon Pain.  That perked them up a little, but they were less interested in high end window shopping so I led them to the Hynnes.  We spent a long time looking at chocolate.  I realized instead of feeling down or daunted about hunting for foods she can eat, Sarah actually enjoys being an informed consumer, learning about products and recalling successful purchases.  I was pretty impressed with her.  Until she bought Adam “chocolate caramel covered bacon,” haha.  BTW, it didn’t taste like bacon at all to me.  I didn’t really want more sweets to bring back home, so I opted for a single piece, and she bought it for me.  

When we got back to the train station, we found that we had the wrong time.  It kills me because Aled and Sarah tried and failed to look it up, so I found it with a single click in the right direction, but I later realized I had the weekend time.  So this morning I checked AGAIN, and found a weekend time.  I was so sure I was right!  So we decided to stay and eat near the station.  We ended up at The Harp, which I was really unsure about.  But Sarah was able to get something, my salad turned out to be amazing, and everyone else seemed happy and had a nice time.  Sarah wouldn’t let me pay; this time she paid for us.  Good times!