On our final day in Boston, we were up early so we could get ready, pack up our things, and get out of the Airbnb before our rental had to be off the street (it was parked on a street that had street cleaning on Monday mornings). We drove into the city and parked in a parking garage for the day. Then, we headed straight to Flour for breakfast!

I was a little breakfast sandwich-ed out by this point so I opted for a blueberry muffin. It hit the spot but I probably should have gotten something more filling because we were about to do a lot of walking!

After breakfast, we walked over to Trident Booksellers (this would be our third bookstore of the trip, for those keeping track) so I could peruse the stacks. Trident was everything I could have hoped for! A cute indie bookstore with a real local feel. They even had Blind Date with a Book! I mean, I had to participate. How could I not?

Along with my blind date book (which I was happy to receive!), I also picked up an Alisha Rai romance, The Right Swipe. Super excited to dive into that novel!

Next, we walked over to the Boston Public Garden – although we got sidetracked by a beautiful church in the middle of the city. The Central Congregational Church is a National Historic Landmark that was built between 1865 and 1867 and is decorated by Tiffany and Co – yes, that Tiffany! The stained glass windows and huge glass chandelier are dazzling and we had to take a moment to sit inside and marvel at its elegance.

We made it to Boston Public Garden around 11:30 and I could have spent hours there, just taking in the beautiful views. There was also this sidewalk filled with trees in their full fall glory – bright orange leaves that became THE photo opp place for everyone in Boston, haha. (Well, the tourists, at least!) I would have absolutely tried to do a jumping fall picture with leaves flying around me if my feet didn’t hurt so much. (The theme of my damn trip – next trip, I’m really going to invest in better walking shoes!)

Our next stop was the Charles River – another place I could have stayed for hours. It was gorgeous there, looking like a goddamn postcard. I couldn’t imagine having something so perfect in my own backyard! (I mean, St. Petersburg is beautiful in its own right, so I do have to give it some credit, haha.)

Our next location was Harvard! I really wanted to walk through Harvard just once to take in the buildings and the scenery and just be surrounded by all the incredibly smart people. (Although, it did make me immensely grateful that I’m out of school.) Harvard in October was pure magic.

After that, we stopped for lunch at Quincy Market, picked up some souvenirs from booths nearby, and then it was time to leave. We battled some classic Boston rush-hour traffic on our way to the airport but got there with plenty of time to check in, grab a quick dinner, and fly home to Tampa!

And that was our Boston trip! It was a glorious time and I have developed a fondness for Boston that I never thought I’d have, considering how much I loathe their sports teams, haha. But it’s a beautiful city, one I can’t wait to come back to soon.

Our third day in Boston was an early one – we wanted to get on the road to Salem by 7:30am so we could try to beat the crowds. (Salem in late October, may not be the best time to visit if you hate crowds, haha.) And, I’d like to take a moment to commend the fact that all five of us were dressed, hair done, makeup on, and ready to go by 7:20! BOOYAH.

Unfortunately, this is what greeted us when we got to our rental. A flat tire!

The rental car place wanted to charge us $70 + admin fees to come out and change the flat, but thankfully, one of our friends has AAA and was able to get us a tire change for free and the guy arrived within 10 minutes! That’s some service.

We were able to get on the road by 8:30 so we weren’t super behind schedule like we imagined we would be. When we arrived in Salem, we found a FREE parking spot right near the cafe we wanted to go to for breakfast. (We were thrilled to find parking so easily, even more so when we discovered other parking lots were charging $40 to park!)

Our first stop of the day was breakfast at the Gulu-Gulu Cafe. I ordered a breakfast sandwich and a peppermint mocha. The sandwich was phenomenal but the coffee drink was just okay. Not enough peppermint for me! We giggled a lot during this meal and developed a lifetime’s worth of inside jokes. It’s always a good time when you can’t breathe because you’re laughing so hard!

After our delightful breakfast, it was time to get out and explore Salem! I requested a bookstore visit to Wicked Good Books, which is a small independent bookstore where I picked up an adorable tote. I would have liked to buy a book but I knew we were visiting two other bookstores while in Boston and needed to adhere to a semblance of a budget.

After the bookstore, we just strolled around town, stopping when something caught our eye – like the Salem Witch Trials Memorial. This was a powerful memorial that went in a U-shape, with large granite stones commemorating the people who were executed during the trials. Each stone had a person’s name, how they were executed, and their execution date. (We were really disturbed by the man who was pressed to death. Can you imagine?!?!) There were flowers left on every stone and a few had notes from family members. I can only imagine how it must feel to come to this site to see a family member memorialized.

After that, we decided to go to the Salem Witch Museum because a few of us were interested in learning more about the history behind the trials. Unfortunately, the line to get in was out the door and once we found out that the line was just to get a time to visit the museum (!), we were like, “Well, there’s always Wikipedia.” Heh. There was too much of Salem to explore to stand in line for that! I would definitely love to come back to Salem (when it’s less crazy!) to visit more of the museums, but it was just a busy time of year.

Then, we found the Pickering Wharf Marina where we enjoyed the view of the water from a set of Adirondack chairs. Blissful! (Also, my feet were killing me by this point so it was a necessary break for me.)

We walked around Salem for a bit longer and then decided to head back to where the street market was being held to buy some fun tchotchkes to take home. We passed by a great little booth filled with cat toys earlier in the day and I wanted to go back to buy one of the tiny witch’s hats because, honestly, how adorable would Eloise look in one? I think she would tolerate it for, like, two seconds, but that’s long enough to snap a picture, right? Ha. Unfortunately, she sold out of the tiny hats so I picked up some catnip toys instead (which they went bonkers for).

At this point, we broke off as a group because three of us decided to partake in a psychic reading! There were a bunch of options at this street fair and we were lucky to find one without a wait. I opted for a tarot card reading and I’ll be completely honest: I went in with all of the skepticism in the world about it. Psychic stuff is something I was told to stay far, far away from as a kid growing up in an evangelical church. I wasn’t sure how much I believed in it but thought it could be a neat experience – as long as I didn’t hear that I was going to die in, like, 30 days or something.

And, y’all. I was blown away by how accurate my reading was! One of the first cards I pulled was about a situation I’m finding myself in at the present moment, and the push/pull I’m experiencing about it. I also pulled a card that said I’ve been leaning on a significant female figure in my life as I make this decision – ding, ding, ding! My mother! There were other cards I pulled that gave me great clarity about my life and what I can expect out of it over the next few months. All in all, it was an extremely positive experience and I’m really glad I pushed myself out of my comfort zone to get a reading done. It’s not something I would have ever thought I’d do, but that’s the beauty of life, isn’t it? It takes us to unexpected places!

I also talked to the tarot reader about being a Sagittarius, as I’ve never identified with that sign. He is a Sag as well and we couldn’t have been two more different individuals! He told me to look into my rising sign and moon sign to get a fuller picture of my signs. My moon sign is Pisces and my rising sign is Aquarius. I don’t really feel like the traits of Aquarius rising are very “me,” but I definitely could identify with the traits of Lunar Pisceans. Like, really, really identify. It was the first time I read something about my “sign” that actually rang true for me. I don’t really know what these moon signs and rising signs truly mean, other than that’s the position of the earth when I was born, and I’m still not fully on board with astrology but it’s fun to play around with and read about!

After our readings, we met back up with our friends. It was a little after 2 p.m. and Salem was getting very busy! There were people everywhere and it was getting harder to walk around due to the crowds. We decided we were ready to leave.

We stopped in the Brookline area to visit a bookstore and have dinner. The bookstore we visited, Brookline Booksmith, is incredible. It’s two stories, with the bottom story devoted to used books and the top story devoted to new books. I could have spent hours there but I wanted to be mindful of my friends’ time. (Most of them don’t buy books, preferring to use the library instead. I used to be the same but then discovered how much I love the aesthetic of books in my home and the utter joy I receive from buying books and perusing bookstores. However, I still use my library frequently, especially for romance novels! My reading life ratio shakes out to 60% library books to 40% owned books now.) I picked up one new book (The Collected Schizophrenias by Esme Weijun Wang) and called it a day.

After that, we headed over to The Publick House for dinner where I had a super delicious burger that really hit the spot. (What is it about traveling where you never seem to eat at normal times? We typically ended up skipping lunch and going for an early-ish dinner the whole time we were in Boston.)

Then, it was back to Southie and figuring out how we wanted to spend our last day in Boston! Our flight left at 7:20 p.m., which gave us plenty of time to enjoy more of the city before leaving.

Our second day in Boston was a busy one! All in all, I walked 21,000 steps and let me tell you, it is definitely time to invest in a new pair of shoes and some comfort inserts because my feet and calves were screaming at me by the end of the day.

We started our day with breakfast at a spot within walking distance of our Airbnb, called The Paramount. It was a sit-down restaurant but they request that you order your food at the counter and pay for your meal first before taking a seat. I ordered a breakfast sandwich on an English muffin and it was the biggest English muffin I’ve ever seen! It was quite apparent it was a homemade muffin and so delicious!

After breakfast, we took a bus into the city so we could walk the Freedom Trail. Originally, we planned to take a free guided tour but there weren’t any spots available so we guided ourselves around the trail using an online guide that talked about the significance of different spots around the city.

We started our adventure at the Massachusetts State House, where the Freedom Trail begins, and then followed the brick road throughout Boston.

We visited Granary Burying Ground where John Hancock, Paul Revere, and Samuel Adams are buried.

We saw the Boston Latin School, which is the oldest public school in the U.S. (founded in 1635!) and where five signers of the Declaration attended (Franklin, Adams, and Hancock among them). What’s astonishing about this school, though, is that it didn’t start accepting girls until 1972! So, basically, my mom wouldn’t have been able to attend it until she was in second grade. !!

After that, we quickly walked through a bunch of other sites, like the Old Corner Bookstore (that is now, unfortunately, a Chipotle), Old South Meeting House, and the site of the Boston Massacre. Then, we decided to take a break and my friends indulged me in a VERY touristy visit to the Cheers bar.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the original bar (i.e., the pub that was the inspiration for the TV show and I am rather sad that we didn’t visit that one – something to do next time!) but a replica bar that was established in 2001. However, I still sat at the very same spot as George Wendt (NORM!) did when the bar opened, so there’s that. I enjoyed a mug of their local cider (Downeast) and then just had to pay an extra $8 to keep the mug because how could I not? It’s perfect! (They gave me a brand new mug, btw, wrapped in bubble wrap.)

After our brief visit to Cheers, it was back to the Freedom Trail we went! We stopped at Faneuil Hall, which hosted the first-ever Town Meeting in America.

Then, we took a slight detour off the Trail to walk through the Holocaust Memorial set in the middle of town. I didn’t take any pictures because it just didn’t feel right to me. It’s a beautiful yet harrowing memorial, featuring six glass towers that symbolize the six major concentration camps. Etched on the outside of each tower are numbers to represent the six million Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust. The numbers are tiny, stacked on top of each other, and it helps you grasp just how many people were killed. How many families were gone forever, lives destroyed. On the inside of each tower are quotes and stories from people who survived, and many of the stories had me gasping in disbelief. It’s a reminder of what humans can do to one another.

After the Holocaust Memorial, we visited a few more landmarks, including Paul Revere’s house and the Copp’s Hill Burying Ground. Then, we crossed the North Washington Street Bridge for the final two stops on the Freedom Trail: the USS Constitution and the Bunker Hill Monument.

But whew, these last two stops took the longest to get to! From the Copp’s Hill Burying Ground to the Bunker Hill Monument is 1.3 miles and it felt never-ending to me! Finally, though, we got to the Bunker Hill Monument, and oh, how happy I was to be finished! Ha. The Freedom Trail is quite the journey!

After we’d completed our tour of the Freedom Trail, it was time to say goodbye to one of our friends for the next few hours as she was going to visit a friend while we were on our next adventure: a food tour in East Boston! My friend found us this tour: Boston Bowling & Bites that was right up our… alley. (Honestly, didn’t mean to make the pun, but I’m leaving it.)

We took an Uber to the meeting point and found our guides. It was going to be the four of us and an older couple, which was a nice small group! Our first order of business was to take a ride on the subway to East Boston, which was an area we hadn’t visited yet. East Boston was a city built and maintained by immigrants and it shows in the eclectic mixture of restaurants and culture.

We stopped at an authentic Colombian restaurant for empanadas. It was a delicious snack! I loved the cornmeal crust and potato and beef filling. So yummy! It really hit the spot and I was looking forward to what other “bites” awaited us on this journey.

However, that was all she wrote for bites. Yep. ONE snack is what we got during this tour when we were promised “two to three.” Super disappointing!

What was not disappointing, though, was playing candlepin bowling! We went to such a unique spot in East Boston for candlepin bowling called Central Park Lanes. When we stepped inside, it was like going back in time. This bowling alley hasn’t been renovated since the 1960s, which means there’s no technology like we’re used to! You even keep score on a piece of paper! I felt like I was on a movie set. 🙂

Candlepin bowling is vastly different than “regular” 10-pin bowling. The pins are much smaller and so is the ball. It’s small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, so it feels more like playing ski ball than bowling. You also get three chances in each frame rather than two and the pins are not moved out of the way with each roll. Instead, they can actually help you knock more pins down!

The verdict is that I was pretty awful at candlepin bowling. Like, got the worst score in the whole group awful. I think I scored a 28? Yeahhhhh.

On the other hand, I think we discovered that one of our friends is a candlepin bowling phenom! She easily killed us all (not that she had much competition with me, ha).

It was fun, though! I enjoyed trying to learn how to play an entirely new type of bowling! And sometimes it’s fun to discover you are just fricken awful at something and just try to enjoy playing something new with your friends. I mean, that’s what I tried to do! I’m not sure if I was successful at it because my competitive streak means I always want to be the best, argh.

Once bowling was over, so was our tour. We could have paid $20 for the second part of the tour, which involved more “eats” but we wanted to get back to Southie and back to our friend!

(Also, a very funny moment of this trip is when we’re all standing outside the bowling alley and the four of us Florida girls are wrapped up in our coats and talking about how much colder it got. The tour guide, a Boston native, steps outside and says, “Wow, it’s really warm tonight!” LOLZ. Weather is relative, y’all!)

We Ubered back to Southie to meet up with our friend and decided to go to a place called Coppersmith, based on a recommendation. It was a really cool place with a really great bar area and an actual food truck inside the restaurant. It was definitely overstimulating for me, though, especially after such a full, active day. It was loud, between the music and all the competing conversations from the bar area, and hard to hear my friends. I enjoyed my food, though! It was really good, and I’d love to go back at a time when I wasn’t so exhausted and it wasn’t so crazy busy.

And that was our second day! Next up, a day in Salem!