Boston (Chinese) Tea Party

We left Cape Cod on Wednesday and headed for Normandy Farms Campground Resort in Foxborough (or Foxboro, its spelled both ways around here), Massachusetts so that we would be close to a train line that would carry us into Boston. But when we got here, we found out that it would be easier and cheaper to take the subway into Boston, but we had to drive further to get to a station. While we were digesting this piece of news, we were escorted to site 1005, yes that's right, there are over a thousand campsites here at Normandy Farms, ranging from the full hookup sites for big rigs, where we are staying, to small patches of lawn where you can set up your tent. There is every kind of campsite in between and I think every brand of trailer and tent is represented here. These Easterners are really into this camping thing and their sites are decorated with lights, flags, screen rooms and hammocks, dog houses for the dog, bikes, scooters, and halloween decorations. Yes, it is October here in Normandy Farms this week and the trick or treaters came around the very night that we arrived. We were given a sign to put in our window to let the little goblins know that we were Not Prepared. So no one came to our door, but they were out in force and the haunted house which was a converted trailer and the haunted cemetary were both open for business. Everyone has a fire in their firepit here in the evening and during the day there are sports programs, three swimming pools, and a clubhouse that is crawling with children. But we are in the quiet old fogie section and for the most part we don't see or hear anyone else. We have since been to Boston twice; the first time to get the lay of the land and figure out the subway system and the second time to hit the used bookstores. On our first subway visit in Quincy Adams Station, (see top left photo) we were able to purchase a charley card for $15 each which allows us to use the card as often as we want for 7 days. When we popped up from the subway, we were in the Boston Commons which was a good place to start looking around. As we walked along we could see that many old buildings were still standing amidst the taller new ones. (See Left photo) From the Commons we headed over to Quincy Marketplace (above right photo) where we had some lunch. Inside Quincy Marketplace it is lined with food stalls of every kind of food from just about every country. When we finally made our choices we had a hard time finding a place to sit and eat as the place was packed with both tourists and locals all trying to eat during the lunch hour. . .We then walked up to the North End, which used to be called Little Italy. And I can see why they would call it that, as every shop was an Italian Deli, or Italian Grocery, or an Italian Restaurant. If we had known what lay ahead of us, it would have made a much better option for our lunch. . . . . . . .Today when we headed into Boston, it was a Saturday and the traffic was lighter, thank heavens as it is usually bumper to bumper, and the subway was not as populated either. This time we stayed close to Washington Avenue where we visited the Commonwealth Book Shop (right photo) where Allan found a copy of Hakluyt's Voyages, a collection of eyewitness accounts of famous voyages in the age of discovery. I found seven books, mostly from the travel section which is one of my favorite sections of a bookstore. Among other titles, I got What Am I Doing Here by Bruce Chatwin (the author of Songlines), Corsican Excursion by Charles Elwell with Illustrations by Edward Lear, which I confess was the main reason I wanted the book, his drawings are so beautiful. I also thought I might like Barbarian In The Garden by Zbigniew Herbert, translated from the Polish in 1985, which is a series of essays about his travels in Italy. And Four Others. I could have easily picked up more, but Allan had heroically volunteered to carry any books we found in the daypack and I did not want to completely weigh him down. Anyway we moved on to the Brattle Book Shop (see photo to the left) a few streets away where they had numbers of books on tables outside for $5, $3, or $1 Dollar. Oh my goodness, I needed a wheelbarrow, but tried to hold back with only six additional books whereas Allan selected only two. He got The Life Of Leopold Bloom by Peter Costello who tries to reconstruct Bloom's life from the clues he finds in James Joyce's Ulysses. And he also purchased another navigation book by a Master Mariner named Captain Alfred J. Green, who tells stories of the voyages on his sailing ship. My greatest finds this time were Rose Macaulay's Pleasure Of Ruins, the complete classic unabridged text of her travels to Thebes, Corinth, Pompeii, and Angkor-Wat.... also I got an autographed copy of Holt's Sixty Years As A Publisher which is a series of essays on topics that originally appeared in periodicals around 1923. . . . and then I had to get ABC ET CETERA, which is the Life & Times of the Roman Alphabet, a book about word roots which is a topic that I got very interested in when I was a biology major in college. . . . . plus 3 more books that peaked my interest. Luckily, the guy at Brattle Books saw that our backpack was already heavy so he gave us a Brattle Bag to carry our new books. From here we headed over to Chinatown to see what was there and get some lunch. There were a few streets with Asian restaurants but it was no competition for the Chinatown in San Francisco which has stalls and shops, and plucked smoked ducks hanging in shop windows. But we did find the Great Taste Bakery and Restaurant, a pretty authentic place to eat, if the fact that we were the only caucasions amidst the remainder of the asian patrons who were all speaking Chinese, as were all of the waitstaff is any indication of authenticity. We had to point to the selections that we wanted and even though they had names that I thought I recognized, what showed up on the table was not quite that. I wanted potstickers, so I ordered fried pork dumplings, and what I got was 3 objects that looked like very large hush puppies. They had been deep fried and the outer layer was sweet bread like stuff with pork meat inside. They were good, but high in carbs and low in protein. I was lucky I got what I did I guess as some of the other options that could have arrived on my table were Chicken Feet with Chinese Medicine or Jelly Fish with Duck Web. After that narrow escape, we headed to the nearest subway station for home, Allan loaded down with books and me carrying the Chinese TakeOut Bag, maps, and camera.

Cape Cod Week

In the last few days we have been exploring the different villages of the Cape, which means driving along through vast tracts of pine and deciduous forest interspersed with homes and business sometimes in little groupings and sometimes randomly placed back in the woods. It does not seem as if businesses have to be in a commercial district as they can appear just about anywhere, such as the Bank of America that was nestled between two residences in a completely residential area. This is also true of auto repair shops, a bookstore, beauty salon, or veterinarian; they just appear among homes along some street that is not in a town or even close to a town. And the towns are not large enough to be considered a town really, they are usually a main street with a few restaurants and gift shops, maybe the library. Very different than the strip malls we see in the west. The beaches are mostly private. Very rarely have we found a public beach anywhere and if we do find one, then there is an attendant on duty to collect the $15 parking fee. For us that is too much money to pay to walk along the beach for a half hour or so to take some photos, so for the most part, we have not been able to get to the beach. One exception was a beach about 10 yards wide with signs on either side reminding the public riff raff to stay on their designated strip of beach. In the first beach photo you can see the signs posted on either side of the public strip of beach. The second photo shows the warning sign which is what we have been seeing all along the shores of Connecticut and Rhode Island as well. . . . . . . . . . . On the day that it rained all morning, we headed out to used bookstores on route 6A and found several books at Parnassas in Port Yarmouth Village, a couple of nautical books at Columbia Trading Co. in West Barnstable, and one or two books in Titcomb's Bookshop in East Sandwich. After lunch we visited a needlepoint shop where I found a couple of canvases to work on this winter. . . . . . . . . . . On another day we drove through Hyannisport and then visited Trader Joes to stock up on coffee and other supplies, before heading to the most fabulous bakery we have seen in a long time called Pain de Avignon which is a French Bakery and the pastries were all enticing, the breads were all crusty, and the Frey's were busy loading up on scones, oatmeal cookies, and raisin pecan bread. . . . . . . . . . . One evening we visited Mary Anne Tessier and her husband Walt at their home for a wonderful dinner on the outside deck, talking about art and where to go while we were here. Mary Anne is also a pastel artist and is a member of our Arizona Pastel Assoc. although we met her originally at the home/studio of Nancy Clauss who was our teacher the first year we lived in Phoenix. On Sunday we saw Mary Anne again at an art fair that she participates in with her Yarmouthport Art Guild. It was fun to see all of her paintings and we really loved her paintings of the local scenery although we liked all of her animal paintings too. Yesterday we headed back up to Provincetown to have breakfast and give Allan a chance to walk way up the beach to get photos of the boats in the water. He also got some photos of plein air artists painting the local scenes. One of the artists seems to have lost control of his paper towels in the wind which is only one of the many hazards of painting plein aire. Tomorrow morning we will be heading off to Foxborough, MA where we hope to take the train into Boston for a look at the bookstores they might have. They also have an Art Museum which we hope to visit. We are looking forward to seeing another new place.

Provincetown, Massachusetts

Allan and I arrived in Cape Cod on Tuesday morning after a short journey from Mystic, Connecticut without any brake difficulties at all, what a relief to have that problem cleared up. Because the island of Newport, RI is between Mystic and Cape Cod, we had to drive north up to Providence, RI and then turn about a 45 degree turn and drive south for the same distance. The traffic was as described in all the tour books, a steady stream of cars and trucks going in both directions on route 6, the main road that goes from one end of Cape Cod to the other. Thanks to the Droid, we found the Old Chatham RV Resort in South Dennis easily but getting the 5th wheel into its space was not as easy and without the help of our new neighbor to our right and our new neighbor across the street, both of whom moved their cars and helped to direct Allan back into the spot without knocking down any of the old pines or overhead wires, we would still be out there working on our divorce. The resort is about 98% full of seasonal singlewides, park models, old trailers with patio rooms, and permanent fifth wheels with skirting. All of these vehicles stay here all year long and the people close them up in October for the winter and then return to them in April when the park reopens. The park is filled with tall pines and reminds us of the Monterey Peninsula in California, except it is a little more humid instead of the cooler fog that Monterey usually has in the summer. We spent the remainder of Tuesday doing the laundry and taking showers as we had no sewer in the Seaport Campground in Mystic, CN and it was extremely inconvenient to have to make an appointment with their little honey wagon that they brought around so that you could dump. So we are back in the lap of luxury here in Cape Cod with sewer and a good signal for the verizon air card and sunshine, lots of sunshine. The first thing we wanted to see while we were here was Provincetown. We had read so much about it, historically it was one of the first places where the pilgrims landed, artistically it is the birthplace of the Cape Cod School of Art which was founded by Hawthorne, next run by Hensche, and then finally run by Lois Griffel, who now lives in Tucson. And of course it is famous as being a major gay resort with several of the guidebooks warning people if they are not comfortable with people of the same sex showing affection in public, they probably shouldn't go there. But as Allan and I are both from California, specifically around the San Francisco area... it was no problem for us and actually we usually find that some of the best restaurants and shops are in areas where the clientele is gay. We were not let down in any way... the town was right on the beach where the regular public was allowed to go without any payment whatsoever. The main street was lined with shops, cafes, galleries, and small hotels. The streets were so narrow that cars were only allowed on certain streets and even then those streets were one-way only. The pedestrians came in all sizes and shapes, wearing all sorts of outfits, families, dog walkers, couples holding hands, musclemen with gleaming torsos, harley davidson riders, bicyclists, and old men with crutches. Everyone was there and everyone was happy and friendly and glad to be walking in the sunshine. We had breakfast in the Post Office Cafe and it was one of the best meals we have had. Allan had linguica and eggs with pecan/raisen toast and I had potato pancakes with bacon and eggs. Then we set off for some retail therapy and purchased a funny little red plane which hangs from a rocker. As it rocks, the plane wings go up and down. Did we need this? No. Do we know where we are going to put it? No. Did we have to have it? Yes, absolutely, our memento from Provincetown. All of the photos are from Provincetown; the one on the top left is Commercial Street which is the main street of town, top right is Allan in one of the many fun shops lining Commercial Street, bottom left is looking out across the beach into the bay side of the Cape where the water is as warm as bath water, and bottom right is only one of the many buildings that were covered or surrounded in flowers.