Boston: Ice Cream, Italian Food, and Beer
I’ve been meaning to make it up to Boston for some time to visit a few friends in the area, and it finally happened! It was a jam-packed weekend, but jam-packed with fun so it flew by. We were staying with my high school friend Peggy up by the Tufts campus, and got to explore the area, grab some lunch and ice cream, and also just hang out and catch up, which was really nice. Of course in typical Katie-Tyler(-Peggy) fashion we ended the night with margaritas!
It was a sequence of early morning days which was a little draining, but still worth it. After our early morning flight on Friday, we were up early Saturday as well for a tour of the Sam Adams Brewery! This location in Jamaica Plains does brew beer, but has increasingly changed from a production brewery to a “test lab” where they make small batches of non-release beer and fine tune their flavors and processes to help determine what (if any) will make it to market!
The brewery had the right balance of interaction, knowledge, and drinking! Emphasis on the drinking of course, as it should be! We started off the tour tasting the toasted barley, learning about hops and getting to smell it on our hands, then moved to the steel drums where our tour guide Joe explained the process. We finished up in the tasting room where you receive tasting souvenir glasses and pitchers of 4 beers–the last of which for us was an un-released dark beer that was very light. I left them feedback, so we’ll see if our visit helps it show up on shelves!
We grabbed a street-fair breakfast with my big (college sorority sister) who I don’t get to see often, and soon to see even less since she and her boyfriend are moving to LA! So excited for them, but happy I got to see them before the big move. Plus the street fair food really hit the spot after beer breakfast!
The rest of Saturday was spent walking the freedom trail where we visited Gramary Park (that HanCock headstone though…), Paul Revere’s House, and the Old Statehouse. We ended the evening with Peggy again, grabbing dinner at La Dolce Vita in the “little Italy”-esque North End, which had AMAZING food. Shout out to Jackie & Zack for the recommendation, the three of us literally cleaned our plates!
We were out on an outbound flight early Sunday and met a friend who was in DC for Mother’s Day before he and his fiancé caught their flight! So like I mentioned a crazy whirlwind of a weekend, but with all the best things: good friends, good food, and a great fiancé.
