Let the Holiday Season Begin!

The Saturday after Thanksgiving is always reserved for the tree lighting at the Charles Hotel in Harvard Square!  It's become a tradition for us and occasionally our friends join us, which makes it even better.  Back when I decided to spontaneously move closer to the city (thanks to a pink slip, some frustration, a perfectly timed job opportunity, and a timely visit to Harvard Square) these were the nights I envisioned- fun times, good friends, walking around the city, eating yummy food, you get the picture!

The evening started with the tree lighting at the hotel.  We were lucky enough to be joined by some friends who recently moved to the 'burbs (they are really happy and that's awesome for them so I'm not judging, I promise...too each his own.)  It was nice that we were still able to get together and do something in the city.  They always have a band playing Christmas Carols and it's just a fun way to kick off the season. 

The tree isn't like the big ones in Boston but it's nice.  This year it took them a couple of "count downs" to actually light the tree and I kind of felt like we were in that scene from Christmas Vacation.  They finally got the trees lit and we all got our pictures taken with the tree before heading to the next stop for the evening. 

Usually we eat in Harvard Square (because that makes sense) but I was disappointed that I couldn't get reservations for Toscano's a week in advance and I couldn't think of a replacement restaurant in the Square so I decided it would be fun to go to Bin 26 on Charles Street.

I'm so glad we did this.  Charles Street is the quintessential Beacon Hill Street and the perfect place to get in the holiday spirit.  We had fun strolling down the street on our way to the restaurant.

I've raved about Bin 26 a few times before and I'll rave about it again.  Everything is just lovely in this cute, neighborhood spot.  There's a bar and some seating at the front of the house and probably ten more tables in the back.  The lighting is soft, the walls are papered in old wine labels, and it just looks like the place you would want to spend the night with friends.  The staff is super friendly.

Since it's a wine bar, Bin 26's wine menu is intense.  It's broken into tons of sections and the waitstaff is more than willing to help you navigate it.  Normally I get a prosecco, but not here.  The reds are just too good to pass up.  We ordered a pinot noir from Oregon and it was delightful.  We went a little crazy with the food and ordered a lot of the tapas to share, and some pasta dishes as well.   Everything we got was delicious.  I'm already dreaming of going back and getting the brushetta, olives, some salami, cheese, the meatballs, and the green beans (they are really, really good.)

After dinner we wanted to extend the evening so we decided to walk around and find a place for dessert.  We didn't walk very far.  Our "journey" took us across the street to the Beacon Hill Bistro.  I'd always wanted to check this place out and was pleasantly surprised when they gladly sat us for dessert and drinks, even though it was only about 8:30.   The bistro is a galley style dining room done up in old fashioned black and white tile, marble tables, and brown cushion benches.  That's totally my style and I loved it immediately.

I loved it even more when I discovered they had a sea salt caramel on the dessert menu.  When I was in Paris my friend kept raving about this ice cream.  She was laser focused on us getting some and we planned a whole afternoon around being in the right spot for it.  I ordered the sea salt caramel ice cream and was blown away.  It was delicious, and much like all of the other food I ate in France, I have been trying to find it here in the city.

Oh! My! Gosh!  The sea salt caramel ice cream at the Beacon Hill Bistro is to die for!  Seriously, it is delicious and they even top it with homemade cracker jacks!  Dessert at this place will definitely be repeated in the near future.

We had a fun time talking about vacation ideas, holiday happenings, new jobs, and lots of other things.  It was truly a great way to start the holiday season.  Added bonus, it wasn't that cold so JO and I walked home (some much needed exercise for me since I've barely been active since the middle of October.) Here's hoping we both stay healthy so we can enjoy the rest of December!

Serafina's and Bond~ City Vicky is Back

City Vicky is back, and just in time for the extra long weekend!  We knew we wanted to stop by Bond for drinks but couldn't figure out a place to have dinner.  JO found Serafina's and it looked cute so we decided to check it out.

I was struck with deja vu when we walked inside this beautiful space.  I really felt like I had been there before, but not as Serafina's.  The space is pretty unique.  There is a beautiful trey ceiling with intricate moulding work.  There's an amber lighting/stone boarder that brings the space warmth.  The color palette is mainly ivory and tan.  The restaurant has a round feeling to it, although it is split into a lounge area and the main dining room/bar.  A long time ago my friend and I had gone to a restaurant with a similar, round feeling for Restaurant Week.  For the life of me I couldn't remember the name of that restaurant but in researching for this post I discovered it.  This beautiful space was once the famed restaurant Radius and I had in fact been there before.  (Not that you care, but it was really bugging me 😀) Apparently, Serafina's is a chain, but it certainly does not feel like one.

I loved the feeling of this restaurant.  It was quaint and cozy even though it's a really big space.  The bar is round in the back of the dining room.  I definitely think JO and I could enjoy the bar in the future.  The service was great and the prosecco was delicious (this is usually how I judge places nowadays 😏) The menu had lots of options at lots of different prices, which is also a really big plus. 

I had intended to get pasta but they had a shrimp, arugula, white bean salad in a champagne mustard vinaigrette on the menu that I couldn't resist.  They had me at champagne mustard vinaigrette!  The beans were marinated perfectly and the shrimp were excellent!  The dressing was perfect.  My only complaint was that there was some sort of cream drizzled on the avocado that wasn't really needed.  JO got the bolognese (because that's his litmus test for restaurants) and he said it was quite good.  I tried some and have to agree.  The sauce had a really rich flavor and they used rigatoni which I always appreciate because you are just asking for trouble with linguini or pasta and red sauce. We weren't going to get dessert but I couldn't pass up on the tiramisu and that was also delicious!!!  So overall, two thumbs up for this place (and I didn't even tell you about the pizza that looks absolutely delicious) so if you're looking for a place to try in the Financial District, this is your place!

After dinner we headed over to Bond in the Langham Hotel.  I love this place and we don't go here nearly enough.  Bond is the bar/lounge for the Langham and is in an old bank vault.  The ceilings are soaring, the lighting is dim, lounge seating abounds, and gorgeous, over the top chandeliers grace the ceiling.  I had heard the hotel was going to close for a year this spring so I wanted to make sure we got some visits in before then.  We had a lovely time with our drinks (JO's Hendrick's gin cocktail was served in a Hendrick's tea cup that I must have now) planning our next adventure and talking about the holiday season in the city. 

Sadly, I heard the next day that Bond is closed and will only host private events from now on.  I'm so disappointed.  Hopefully after the renovations it will open again because it is truly a special space in the city.

A Conversation with Ina Garten

I love the Food Network and one of my favorite shows in Ina Garten.  Last spring I saw an ad for her talk at the Symphony Hall and I impulsively bought a ticket.  Flash forward to November 20th.  I had just gone nine rounds with the plague and it was cold and rainy.  I thought about skipping out and going to bed early but JO rallied me with chants of "FOMO" and reminding me that Uber makes everything easier. 

I'm so glad I went.  Ina Garten is the same in person that she is on her show.  She is just so genuine and sweet and sincere.  I loved hearing about how she went from working at the White House, to buying the Barefoot Contessa, to making the leap to the Food Network.  And of course, I loved hearing about her and Jeffrey because could they be any cuter!!!

Some of my favorite lines included:

*Find someone who makes you feel like you are the most important person in the world and you will be happy forever.

*When I invite someone to dinner it's because I love them and I want to make them food that they love.  If that means I serve canned cranberry sauce next to homemade sauce so be it.

*Find something you love and figure out how to make a living from that.

*And for goodness sake, just follow the recipe!

On the quick Uber ride home, I was reminded just how lucky I am to live in the city.  I say it all the time, but I get to go to all of these events and performances because it's not a production for me.  I can easily get into and out of the city, and as a result, I get to do a lot of really fun things, like see the one and only Ina Garten live!

ThanksgivingFest

Once again we hosted all of our friends for a ThanksgivingFest celebration!  I absolutely love this tradition and am so lucky to have stumbled into such a special group of friends.  Huge shout out to JO for doing all of the work this year.  Literally, all of the work.  I bought some flowers and was barely able to put them in vases before I had to take a four hour nap and try to pull myself together for the evening.  

Netflix and Meds

What happened on Wednesday?  Well, I woke up and felt a bit sick again.  I was so mad and annoyed.  I had a really long day ahead of me and I was finally starting to feel better.  How could this be happening again?

By the end of school I knew something was wrong.  I drove all the way down to practice and was completely miserable.  I lasted a half hour before getting back in my car and heading home.  By the time I got to my house I knew something was very, very wrong.  I barely managed to crawl into bed.  I was achy, feverish, and my armpits hurt so bad.  When I woke up the next day I knew I had to get to the doctor, and fast.

Thankfully, we have an Urgent Care in our neighborhood (although the five minute walk seemed overly daunting.)  It wasn't even 9:00 and I had already had a strep test and a flu test.  I had been to the Urgent Care a few weeks before and the doctor had mentioned strep but I didn't have a sore throat at that time so I passed on that awful throat culture test (I was seriously traumatized in my early twenties when I had six strep tests in ten days when I had mono.) . Apparently I had had strep for three weeks and it had gotten pretty bad.

I've never had strep so I figured I would take the meds and after a few doses I would be back to my old self.  I dragged myself to Walgreen's to get my prescription and went home to "Netflix and Meds."

(In other news, the new She-Ra is pretty awesome and I was a pretty big fan of the original.)

But the meds didn't kick in right away.  I had no idea how bad strep can be.  I barely survived Friday and it took all my strength (and lots of prosecco) to make it through our ThanksgivingFest.  Sunday was mildly better but Monday was downhill again.  I was seriously getting so frustrated.  I started Googling armpit pain, swollen glands, and all kinds of other things you should never Google.  That's when JO decided we needed to go to Sulmona to take my mind off of it.  (Plus, the prosecco worked the other night so why not try it again.) It was definitely the right choice!

See, prosecco worked~ . Tuesday morning I actually felt like a human again.  I haven't been able to exercise since the middle of October and I have a ton of life stuff to catch up (hence all the blogging) but I'm feeling better just in time for the extra long weekend so I'll take it.

Campfire at Passim

I woke up last Tuesday and honestly thought, this is the best I've felt in a long time.  JO and I headed over to Passim for Zachariah Hickman's "Campfire" event. It was billed as an acoustic sing along with friends in the dark.  How could we not buy tickets to that?  Zachariah is a really talented local musician who is known for playing the upright bass.  He plays with Mark Erelli a lot and is really supportive of a lot of the local musicians we have become fans of.  He's a really funny guy with a great sense of humor so we knew the event would be fun but I think we were both really surprised by just how great it was.

JO picked out a table right next to the "campfire," a plug in yule log thing that definitely came from CVS!  Hickman sang a lot of songs and had lots of friends join him.  It really was a campfire sing along.  There was jazz, a string trio, and everything in between.  Isa Burke, of my favorite Lula Wiles, even sang several songs. 

Yes, there was a tuba finale!

I'm a proud member of Club Passim and this show is one of the reasons why.  Passim gives artists a chance to do inventive things like this event.  Here's my typical plug for Club Passim.  If you have never been, please, please, please go.  It's totally worth it. 

I was finally feeling back to myself and I was already thinking about all the fun things I needed to get back to doing.  Then Wednesday happened!

The Midterms

The Women Wave made a splash this year.  In two more years, it's going to be a tsunami!  

After voting, we headed over to 730 Tavern in Central Square to watch the election results.  This is the same place we watched the horrific events of 2016 unfold.  I didn't want to go back but I'm glad we did.  I hadn't been since it changed from the Tavern on the Square and the food was great.  They have a ways to go to understanding that they are a bar in the People's Republic of Cambridge (they didn't have the sound on for the results) but they have two years to work all of that out.

Once again, Trina's Fridge led the way with witty commentary!

Here's to more smashing in a few years!

1369 Coffee

I was determined to carve out a little time over the long weekend to go out for coffee and read a book.  Surprisingly, I rarely have time during the school year to actually do this.  (How do people with children survive?)

So when I found myself with thirty minutes all to myself, I made a beeline straight for 1369 coffee with my Kindle in my purse.  Apparently everyone in my neighborhood was "working from 1369."  I was lucky to get the last seat in the place.  I actually thought I was over my cold. 

Little did I know what was headed my way!

Ikea~ What Were We Thinking

I'll tell you what we were thinking!  We were thinking that it was 6:00 pm on a Saturday and we had one return and one item to pick up.  How hard could that be? 

Hard! Ver, very hard! 

Ikea was wrecked!  Like, the line went all the way back to the far wall of the warehouse.  And there was deli style number ticket system for returns!  I quickly analyzed our options and decided the split up method was going to be the only thing to keep us sane. 

I headed to the checkout line (I'm much more aggressive in merging lines than JO and Ikea queues are not for the faint of heart) and JO went to the return area. 

I tried my best to resist the aisle shopping that is so easy to sucomb to in situations like this so I feel pretty proud of myself for just leaving with these two Huskies, which will make fun Christmas presents for my niece and nephew.

We managed to get through in just an hour, so I guess I have nothing to complain about.  On the way out we met two guys who had been inside the Ikea for seven hours!!!

On the way home we even hit up Target and the mall!  That's like the triathlon of retail!  I'm pretty sure we are ready for holiday shopping season after that!

U-C-O-N-N, UConn, UConn, UConn!!!

It's November so that means two things~ ThanksgivingFest and UConn!!! 

UConn had their season opener at home for the first time in a long time and we weren't going to miss that.  I was feeling better and I was so ready to cheer on my Huskies.  I'm super nervous about this season because as a Husky fan I have super high standards.  Our team is a little young this year and the competition is pretty strong.  I was really excited to see the team for myself and get a better grasp on how this season will play out.

It was chilly, but of course we stopped by the Jonathan statue before the game.

The first half was great, the second half a bit bumpy.  I will say, this team has a lot of room to improve and that should frighten the rest of the field! 

After the game, we headed over to Geno's Grille for lunch.  While we were eating, a older man came over to our table and offered us free second row, behind the bench tickets for the men's game later that night.  You can't say no to that so we headed right back to Gampel!

Added bonus- Napheesa Collier, star of the women's team and JO's favorite, sat at the table behind us.

It was so fun to watch the game from that vantage point.  We could hear every swear that came out of Dan Hurley's mouth!  The men's team is fun to watch again!

We were so lucky and it was a great way to kick off the season! 

City Night Out at Marliave!

Guess what?  I got the plague.  It was bad, it lasted almost five weeks, and it wasn't pretty.  It started off as just an annoying cold, developed into laryngitis, went away for four days, and then came back with a vengeance in the form of strep throat (more on this, in my ode to the Urgent Care in a future post!)

After the laryngitis and before the strep throat, we managed to have a really enjoyable weekend, filled with lots of fun things, including a much needed city night out!  Unlike a few weeks ago, I planned ahead and got us a reservation at one of our favorite restaurants, Marliave.  Marliave is the  restaurant that I always recommend to people when they want to know where to eat out in Boston.  It's elegant and sophisticated with a warm, cozy dining room.  The waitstaff is phenomenal and the food is incredible.  You get all of that at really reasonable prices.  The menu also offers something for everyone and the drink menu is crazy good!  This cocktail, the Tres Curioux, is my favorite one in the whole city!

Originally, I had planned that we would have dinner at Marliave and have drinks somewhere else nearby, but like it seems to do every day now (how do people in Seattle and Portland deal with this for months on end) it was pouring so we decided to extend our dinner with a second drink and dessert.  I still wasn't feeling 100% (probably because I had strep and didn't know it) and walking around in the rain didn't sound like a great idea.  Plus, Marliave has truffles and who doesn't love truffles????

It felt great to be out and about again.  I had been sick for two weeks and my city meter was definitely draining.  I don't do well when that happens.  Marliave is always the right answer for that!

Psycho at the BSO

I'm not a huge Halloween person.  I don't like scary things, I'm not a huge candy junky, and I don't love to dress up in a costume.  I am a huge city person though and when JO suggested we go to see a screening of Psycho with the BSO playing the live score on Halloween night I was all in. 

The show wasn't until 8:00, which left us plenty of time to go out for dinner beforehand.  It felt like it had been weeks since we'd been out in the city.  The last two weekends had seen me up to my eyeballs in school work and battling a nasty cold.  I was definitely looking forward to a night out in the city!

I was pleasantly surprised when I was able to get a table for two at the last minute for Porto near the Prudential Center.  We had been to Porto at the beginning of summer and really enjoyed it.  The restaurant was totally empty when we arrived.  That's when it hit me.  Halloween is the best day to go out in the city!  You could get a reservation anywhere and you won't be rushed at all!  Most adults have to do that trick or treating thing!!!  I'm going to be capitalizing on this from now on!

Porto is a really fun Mediterranean inspired restaurant.  There are lots of sharable plates and a handful of main meals.  I'm a big fan of their wine list.  Their prosecco is fabulous and you get a really nice pour.  The location is great, right next to the Prudential Center.  We were seated in the back dining room that looks out on the courtyard.  You get a real sense of being in the city even though it's a bit quiet since it's not on Boylston Street.  We shared several small plates and they all were delicious!

After dinner we took the short walk over to Symphony Hall.  We had fun getting our picture taken with the movie poster before settling in for the movie.

Hitchcock is a genius!  I won't spoil the movie for anyone but the movie is incredible!  Hitchcock is a master of suspense and the music is amazing.  I kept forgetting to watch the musicians.  It was so much fun to see the movie with a live score and so much fun to just be out in the city again.  Of course, as I write this I'm sick again.  I'm going on day three of no voice.  Another weekend of staying home (and I'm not really good at that!)

October, I Hardly Knew You

How is it November?  What happened to October?  When I wasn't sick, I was swamped with school work.  I feel like I missed the whole month!  Now it's November, the quickest month of the year, so as I see it, it's basically December.