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Sunday, October 03, 2010

Night out in Boston

So it was a night off last night, no show to go to. We all agreed it would be good to head out and have some nice food in a real restaurant for a change! Thomas and Maria arrived at our room around 7pm and we headed out to walk over to the North End area which is Boston's Italian district. It was real busy and we were thinking we may have to wait an hour to get a table at most of the restaurants. We passed a few places and walked past Mike Pastry’s, the line outside was real long and id guess there must have been at least a half hours wait just to get through the entrance into the shop!

We headed further down the street and found a nice looking restaurant with an outdoor patio to the side along with a roof top patio and indoor tables as well. After asking how long it would be for a table of 5 we were surprised when the hostess said about 10 minutes! the place was packed!! 15 minutes later we were seated outside on the patio. 20 minutes after that we were seated at a table indoors! it was freezing outside so the waiter arranged for us to go inside.

Outside on the patio.                                 Table inside

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We ordered a very nice bottle of red wine that I've had before when I've been in the US, its not cheap but Lars, Jens and i were sharing it so that made it a bit easier. When it came and Lars took a sip he loved it! It is the smoothest red wine I've ever had.

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Lars and Jens had pretty much decided on the 18oz Lamb porterhouse steak, however, when our waiter told us the specials he said they had a Bison ragu on the menu tonight! Bison has been on Lars’s list of food he wants to eat for a while so they were both now totally stuck as to what to order, they chose the Bison in the end, I had decided on having the Caprese and then the Taglatellia as a main.

Lars went out for a cigarette and did his usual scary face at the window and Thomas joined in this time! (click on Thomas’s picture for a larger version to see his scary eyes!)

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Our waiter did the rounds around the table and Thomas asked for the dish that had Octopussy in it! We all just busted out laughing and explained to Thomas it was indeed Octopus. The waiter came round to me and for some reason the words that came out of my mouth were not what i was going to choose. I’ll have the veal T bone with the Truffle mash and truffle oiled onions i said!!

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It was great to just sit in a nice place and eat some decent food, we all agreed we should have done this a little earlier in the tour instead of the greasy cafe breakfasts and burgers for dinner!

We headed back to the hotel and called at Mikes Pastry’s on the way so that Maria and Thomas could buy some and see the store, it was their first experience of Mikes. Maria and Thomas then took a cab back to their hotel and Lars, Jens and I headed back to our hotel.

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At first i thought Jens was dancing!! however when he actually went down onto the road i knew he’d fallen. There was a small pot hole in the road just by the curb and Jens hadn't seen it and twisted his ankle straight in it as he stepped off the curb! he fell straight down, don't worry Thomas and I managed to make sure the box of Cannolis were fine! The box landed flat on the road!

He hobbled back to the hotel and it had clearly swollen up like a balloon by the time we got there. The girl in the hotel reception was very nice and went and got some ice wrapped in a towel, when she returned she went a bit pale after seeing his ankle and we were more bothered about her passing out that we were about Jens!

Jens’s foot at the hotel:

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His foot was getting bigger every second and we could see it swelling up more as we stood and looked at it! he made it up to the room, iced it and elevated it on the bed. We were all just thankful that it happened the day before he was leaving and not the day he got here! Lars asked him if he needed anything or needed the TV turning on or anything else and was talking to him like he had an hour left to live! Jens shouted “I'm not fucking dying you know”,lol

 

Woke around 9am this morning, had a shower, packed my case, went downstairs and had 3 boiled eggs and two slices of toast for breakfast! Felt great to eat some “normal” food for breakfast again. I then headed upstairs and found Lars eating his last connoli, i remembered i had one left in the fridge!! Ugggghhhhh it had to be eaten! that's it though now now more sugar for me!

Jens’s foot was still badly swollen this morning, he hadn't had a great nights sleep at all and could hardly walk on his foot when he got out of the bed! Lars went downstairs to get the luggage trolley for us all, during this time Maria and Thomas arrived at our hotel. Getting the luggage down was the easy part, getting Jens down was going to be the hard part! until we thought of the luggage trolley!!

Moving jens to the reception

The receptionist gave us a bandage and i did my magic on his foot! I wrapped the bandage pretty tight to keep compression on it and said if your toes start to turn blue then we’ll slacken it off. Sure enough after 5 minutes we could see it was on too tight, Lars wanted to leave it on and see how blue we could get his toes  but we slackened it off for him.

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Click below for more pics:

The great snore off!!

So who snores the loudest ? You decide!

Click on the comments and say 1, 2 or 3.

Number 1

Number 2

Number 3

Mikes Pastry’s…….

So the day before yesterday before going for breakfast we called in to Mikes pastry’s, its a very well known store in the Italian area of Boston known as the North End. The area is full of Italian restaurants and pastry shops. Until 5 or 6 years ago i had no idea what a cannoli was! an Italian friend of mine in Brooklyn NY took me for a cannoli one day so its all his fault!!

Mikes Pastry’s

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It has to be the largest cake shop I've ever been in. Usually the queue is out of the door and half way around the building however we walked straight in and were served within 2 minutes! We have a fridge in our hotel room so Lars and i both stocked up on a box full as they would keep for a few days. Its now 3 days later and the fridge is bare!

We ended up back here last night after dinner, the queue wasn't too bad and id guess there were 25 people in front of us.

Cakes as big as a bottle of beer!

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There is another store across the street called Modern Pastry and Mikes and Modern are the main two stores that sell the pastries, there's always a line outside of each store.They are in competition with each other and some swear by Mikes and others by Modern. We were pretty happy with Mikes and didn't get a chance to sample Moderns, maybe next time.