The Out-of-Towner

I got back about 1 a.m. last night and as I wound my way through the user-unfriendly MSP airport departing areas, I felt a little like Amy Winehouse, but without the red bra. I had twenty bucks left to my name and hoped the cab to Highland Park wouldn't be more than that. It wasn't, but it was close.

How did I spend my modest budget on this business/pleasure trip? A few mentions:

1. $9.00 admission to Harvard's Fogg Museum. It was both sleeting and snowing that day and my daughter and I were a bit too tired for this museum visit. You know how you've been racing about and are still trying to be excited about your vacation and then you hit the museum (any museum) and you realize you're just not in the mood? But even though the Fogg's collection didn't wow us, we did find some gems among the Rembrandts, Picassos, and Daryl Hannah-inspired Rossettis to make the stop worthwhile. I loved this "Harriet Leavens" by American Ammi Phillips.

2. A "T" CharlieCard, the new swipeable plastic pass that subway riders have embraced heartily in Boston. I loaded $20 on to the card over the course of six days and took about 10 subway rides from north to south, east to west. We were only a block from the Park Street station and could easily hop a red line to Cambridge, which cost my daughter and me a total of $6.80, round-trip. The same round-trip cab fare, on the other hand, cost us $40 total.

3. $20 bucks: Mmm, fresh clams on the half-shell and a light ale at the Union Oyster House, "America's Oldest Restaurant." William H. Macy, of "Fargo" fame, was in town filming a new movie and dropped in to the Oyster House to sign their famed autograph book. I must have missed him, as well as Bill and Hillary Clinton, who were also in town, and Sen. John Kerry, who apparently lives just one street over from where I was staying. Oh well, so much for celebrity sightings; the clams were damn good. And speaking of politics, one of our cab drivers told us he liked many of the candidates but not Romney, former Mass. governor. He said about Romney, "If he couldn't manage one state, how do people think he can manage fifty?" (Later, we took one of our work lunches at the 21st Amendment, a pub between the State House and the Government Center. It was bellowing with lunch talk and practically damp with steam. One of my work associates told me the place was filled with local politicians. . . .)










4. $9.00 for two cigars. A gift for my husband at Leavitt & Peirce (since 1883). The proprietor was everything that, say, Tim Pawlenty is not: stocky, like Rocky Marciano; stylish, wearing wide-legged, black, pin-striped pants and a tailored white shirt and sporting a severe crew cut; and aggressive, but not in an abrasive kind of way--just, "this is my shop, I'm proud of it, I have good taste, I hope you buy something, please do not engage in a cell phone conversation while I'm trying to wait on you." And I did. Buy something, that is.

5. $10.94: A bottle of rose from the nearby market, which I kept in my room, a turn-of-the-century bedroom with four-poster beds and a (nonworking) fireplace and windows that looked out over Joy and Beacon Streets. Each night when I'd return from my day's work, I'd pull up the brocade chair and sit by my window, sometimes watching the office workers in the rowhouse a stone's throw over, who worked so still in front of their computers I wondered if they were mannequins; sometimes watching out over the park, where I'd see the evening tourists or Beacon Hill dogwalkers, or once, a group of about forty students in heavy sweatshirts and knit caps, jogging around the perimeter of the Commons, shouting out in unison every minute or so something that I couldn't make out, like a bunch of recruits at boot camp only all these co-eds seemed happy to be out excercising in the cold air.