Emily's Visit and a Refresher on US History

In mid September, one of my best friends in the world, Emily, came to visit me and Chuck.

Emily has traveled all over the world but had never been to Boston before, so that was especially fun. I am getting really good at being a Boston tour guide! Emily says I taught her more about American history than her high school history class. Which is pretty scary considering the story I tell at the end of this post... 

Unfortunately I had to work all week and Chuck had classes all day, every day, but Emily was able to keep herself occupied. A program similar to the one she works for in LA is here in Boston, so she was able to go and help out with that program each day and observe how the program operates out here on the East Coast.

Each day after work we did something a little different and thanks to the amazing weather we had all week, Emily was able to see a lot of the city.

On our first day, Emily and I walked through Beacon Hill and all the way down Newbury Street for some window shopping. We eventually walked all the way to the Yard House, Emily's favorite restaurant in LA that (Chuck and I discovered accidentally over the summer) we also have in Boston.

Here we are at Yard House in LA back in May of 2011.

Here we are at Yard House in Boston!

Good food, good drinks, good conversation, and some Monday Night Football made for a lovely evening. Chuck was there with us too- he's the one who took the picture. Actually both Yard House pictures were taken by him. Thanks Charles!

During Emily's visit, I introduced her to the best ice cream place in Cambridge, Toscanini's. I of course got sprinkles because they're free and I love sprinkles.

We walked around Harvard and touched the lucky foot of the John Harvard statue. He was decorated in MIT attire to honor the inauguration of MIT's new President that week.

 No visit to Boston is complete without dinner and a pastry in the North End. We chose the Florentine Cafe and I had the best veggie lasagna ever made.

 After lunch at Panera Bread on Emily's last day in town, we walked along the Harbor before we started to walk the Freedom Trail backwards.

We stopped and watched this kid play in the fountains for about 5 minutes. He was so incredibly happy and his parents were so cool to let him run around and get completely soaked in his clothes. Look at all the other really jealous kids watching in the background, wishing their parents were as cool as his.

Photo credit goes to Emily.

We walked the Freedom Trail backwards and since we didn't have time for the 2 hour long tour with a guide, I did my best to remember everything I've learned during my two Freedom Trail tours to tell Emily the significance behind everything. I was doing great until we got to the Granary Burying Ground and Emily started asking me questions about dates. I know a lot about US History but I'm TERRIBLE with remembering exactly WHEN everything happened. 

 So when Emily asked me what year Christopher Columbus "sailed the ocean blue" I completely lost all credibility. We stood in the Granary Burying Grounds for 10 minutes trying to remember- 1592? 1792? Of course not. 1492? But that sounds like way too long ago...

This led to Emily asking Siri "When did Christopher Columbus found America?" which is a hilarious and totally ridiculous question for several reasons and was made funnier by Siri's misunderstanding.

I know this makes us look really dumb by the way but I don't care.

Siri wouldn't give us the answers we wanted, so I looked to my trusty friend Google and well, you can see my search history here.

No idea why I spelled Columbus with a "Cu..." and ocean with a P.

I promise we are smarter than this. Especially now, because after realizing neither of us know as much about Christopher Columbus as we should, we read the entire American History page on Wikipedia while on the train that afternoon.

Emily got to see and do a lot here in Boston, and I almost had her convinced to move here. Sigh. If only.