The oddest suggestion we got for places to eat for our Boston trip was definitely this one. We decided to try it out, because it would be a unique experience. Where do you go get Brazilian seafood stew anywhere, let alone New England?
Rapscallion Honey Wheat.
Caipirinha.
Fried frog legs.
Seafood stew.
They have this hot sauce on the side that is fantastic.
Plantains.
One of the stops on our trip to Boston was Cambridge to check out my cousin’s stomping grounds at MIT and check out Harvard as well. That’s right. We went on vacation to watch smart kids in their element.
Here is a common area in my cousin’s fraternity house. Creepy, right down to the velvet drapes. I think I saw the portrait’s eyes follow me around the room.
MIT’s theather. It’s so odd that they leave everything unlocked. This would never happen at a public school, because the piano would probably be stolen.
The entrance to their classrooms is as grand as the one to the Mines of Moria!
Inside, a hack to honor Steve Jobs, just two days after his death.
We stepped out into their courtyard and there was a class project happening.
Holy crap, they have catapults and sling shots!
Normally when you see a guy in a costume with a pistol and a megaphone, you run for your life. Here, it’s a professor and an Angry Birds physics project.
Knock down those pigs!
“My nerdy students, physics is everywhere!”
“We love physics!”
This is where they do a lot of the hacks. A full-sized plastic cow and a police car were placed on the top of this dome.
The Ray and Maria Stata Center, except it’s missing a few letters. The Ray and Mar A Stat Center.
Does this look like it was designed by anyone you know? Frank Gehry designed this, and every time it rains, it leaks.
The classrooms at MIT. I bet if the rooms at UCLA were brightly colored, I would have stayed awake more often in class.
The media center at MIT, so white.
Michelle, taking in some media.
They have a camera that measures happiness based on facial expressions, and they have four different stations around the campus to measure the overall mood of MIT. Look how happy we are to be at MIT!
Michelle in front of the conductive paint wall. Touch any of the pink flowers and the light next to it goes on.
At Harvard to see the other smart kids in Cambridge. Their buildings are all so beautiful.
Harvard Library, with books that survived the Titanic’s sinking.
Michelle at the Harvard Library. When they told us only Harvard students could go inside, we really want to go and look at their books.
Michelle with Harvard’s founder. See, future children? Mommy went to Harvard. (Technically it’s true.)
Another grand building on the Harvard campus.
The nicest chemistry building I’ve ever seen.
They have a lawn in the center of the campus, where past commencement speeches are played through speakers hung in the trees. The only thing I wondered is why the chairs weren’t chained down. It’s just the public educated side of me that thinks someone is going to steal these chairs and set them up in their dorm rooms.
After seeing MIT and Harvard, Michelle and I decided that our future children will attend Ivy League schools. Sure they’ll end up in a world with people that we have little in common with, and their parents will be a classless embarrassment, but at least we get to see more fun school projects like Angry Birds. Also, they’ll be successful and support us in our old age. Go, smart offspring!
I can’t believe my friend and cousin trusted me to pick up their bottles. That’s the oldest trick in the book! Bowling for beer, anyone?
There was some confusion about whether I was allowed to pick up my friend’s bottles. Fortunately I was in a beer store, so I shopped while they sorted it out.
I think it’s about time I invested in a 29mm capper with some caps.
USC has Chano’s. UCLA has that $2 sandwich shop spot that keeps changing. The college kids in Cambridge have Flour Bakery. The Ivy League school kids win again.
The place is the creation of Joanne Chang, an honors graduate of Harvard College with a degree in Applied Mathematics and Economics. Damn over achievers.
roast chicken, avocado & jicama
smoked turkey, vermont cheddar & cranberry chutney
Not wanting to be the old couple, after we gorged ourselves on pastries and pasta, we decided stay up and head to Howl at the Moon. This bar actually exists in a few cities, including Hollywood. If it’s half as fun as the one in Boston, I’d be happy to go.
The concept is simple. It’s a dueling piano bar that takes requests from the audience, but at least in the Boston location they had six different musicians that night. They play many a lot more than just the piano and they switch up. There was a drum set, an electric guitar, bass, acoustic guitar, a keytar, and they even pulled out a flute during one of the songs.
You can see they are pretty talented. Here they are performing Nicki Minaj’s Super Bass.
Two of my cousins went to MIT, and the third one is currently still enrolled there. When I asked about things to do in Boston, I got very mixed suggestions. One of the suggestions was pretty solid all across the board, Italian food at Giacomo’s on the North End.
The place is small like most places on the North End, so there’s a wait. A line forms outside the restaurant and people are willing to stand for up to a couple hours just to get into this restaurant. I wonder what happens when it starts to snow.
caprese salad-bufala mozarella,fresh tomato,basil and virgin oil
fried calamari
shrimp and lobster pasta.
half lobster & mussels pasta.
Giacomo’s is worth waiting for, because the wait isn’t about just standing around. You can have someone in your party walk half a block to Mike’s Pastry to pick up some treats.
They bake quite a few different treats in their shop.
This, however, is what they are known for, cannolis.
Delicious, cream-filled treats.
Here Michelle enjoys a cannoli with the line to Giacomo’s in the background.
While Mike’s Pastry makes a great pre dinner snack, just up the street past Mike’s is Modern Pastry. They are famous for their sfogliatelle. It’s a flaky, light pastry with filled witha creamy filling. Unfortunately with as full as we were, these were readily handled before we could get any photos.
So if you’re ever in Boston, make this Italian meal tour on the North End. You won’t regret it.
One of the things we wanted to do while on the East Coast was to see leaves of different colors. Yeah, that’s pretty lame but having lived within five miles of the Pacific Ocean my entire life, it was something I wanted to see. We almost saw it two years ago. This time we drove up to New Hampshire to Flume Gorge, and we almost saw it the leaves change this time too.
While our trip to New York to see leaves was a week too late to see the leaves change, this trip was probably about a week too early. Some of the trees were starting to turn, but they weren’t quite there just yet. Still it was nice to get out and see some of what nature has to offer.
Our first full day of Boston left us tired from walking the Freedom Trail and also from drinking beer. After retiring to our hotel for a quick nap, we headed to Myers + Chang.
If you had to guess, you would probably guess Chang, but you would be wrong. That’s not Chang. It’s Woo.
Place mats are local Chinese newspaper pages, and their menu looks like a takeout menu.
Honey Jack with ginger, topped with a lager. Very refreshing, and the ginger and the lager take out the sweetness from the Jack, which is way too overwhelming.
I really enjoy this beer. I found it at BevMo, but it’s $5 a bottle. No thanks.
taiwanese-style cool dan dan noodles, fresh peanut and chili sambal
wok-charred udon noodles, chicken, baby bok choy, oyster sauce
tiger’s tears (aka bang bang & olufsen beef), grilled steak, thai basil, lime, khao koor
braised pork belly buns, bao, brandy hoisin, house pickle
lemon-ginger mousse coupe, homemade fortune cookie
Myers + Chang seems a little gimmicky with giant dragons painted on the windows, charging a luxury fee for Asian dishes when Chinatown is a mere two blocks away. This place is more than Asian food at a premium though. It’s a delicious little joint for familiar foods with a slight twist. They don’t stray too far from the traditional tastes on most of their dishes, which makes it comfort food. The sauces are a little bit different, a little bit lighter, but overall it’s close to what I grew up eating with my parents.
If you feel like exploring a little more, they have that too. Some of their own creations, like chicken and waffles made with a ginger-sesame waffle looked pretty good.
I’d stop into this place again if I was in town, and you should too.
I converted over from and Android phone to the latest iPhone, and these are my thoughts in the week and a half that I’ve had the phone. Please bear in mind that my use of the iPhone is still very limited, and there may be ways to tweak the experience that I haven’t discovered yet. I’m definitely open to suggestions.
The camera is incredibly responsive and takes clean shots, one after another. That’s something I could never get the camera on my Droid to do. However, the lack of any zoom and weak flash make the iPhone camera still just a phone camera. The arguments made about point-and-shoot cameras becoming obsolete is still a ways away. It has no ability to compete with a point-and-shoot unless everything you take a picture of is within a ten foot radius and in decent lighting.
Inside each iPhone app I’ve used the experience is great because it’s uniform. In some Android apps, there doesn’t seem the be the same uniformity of user interface.
Outside the individual apps, however, there isn’t enough integration. When I am sent a Facebook link, the Facebook app should open. A Google Maps link should open my maps program. There doesn’t seem to be a way to do this. That’s disappointing.
The screen is smaller than the screen I had on my Droid. Where this becomes most apparent is the keyboard. It’s got a smaller area to display, and it makes the keys smaller. Not only are the keys smaller, but there is a lack of punctuation characters available on the first keyboard screen set. It’s odd to me that something so common as the period or question mark is placed on a second screen.
GPS navigation is sorely lacking on the iPhone. I was spoiled by Google Maps on Android. It was incredible. The search results were accurate. The turn-by-turn navigation was solid as well, and you can’t beat a free price tag. The free navigation apps are not very good on the iPhone, either missing some key features of navigation or trying to make me drive the wrong direction on a one-way street. I ended up settling on MotionX-GPS Drive, an app that costs only $.99. Thus far it’s been good on navigation but the interface is quite confusing. I’m still getting used to that.
I dislike very much that the only really easy method of pushing files to the phone is via iTunes. I really don’t use iTunes for anything except playing my music catalog. Instead of using iTunes to push my songs to my iPhone, I’m currently pushing my library up to Google Music. I’ve also sync’d up some of my files using Dropbox.
The iPhone really excels when it comes to battery life. I am getting 60% more life out of my iPhone than I was getting out of my Droid, even when it was new. All the things I dislike about iOS are probably contributing to the longer battery life.
Overall I’m very happy with my iPhone. I would have been pretty happy with a new Android phone too I’m sure. Still if I have to suggest a phone for someone to get, the answer would probably be an iPhone. I know there are other good phones out there, but if you don’t want to do the research, you know the iPhone will be solid. Plus, I won’t have to pay for my text messages if you have iMessage.
My one wish for the iPhone right now is better Google integration. Come on, Goople! Appoogle? Whatever. Make friends and make apps.
Hello, there. My name is Matt, but on this website I just refer to myself as m@. I love all things Star Wars, food, beer, and music, especially The Beatles. I'm one who likes to be noticed and will sometimes say or do inappropriate things to get your attention. I'm perfectly complimented by my online and real life partner Michelle.