Boston Day 2: Lexington, Concord, Walden Pond, and Boston's Back Bay District

On Saturday, I met some friends (Di Yin, Brian, and Emily: all academics :>) and we took a trip to historic Lexington and Concord. These pictures document the day; in the text below, I'm only going to present the outline of our activities--the pictures don't convey well how we got where when--and a few details that aren't represented by a picture. Sorry, I don’t have a map that displays where we traveled.

Lexington is a fairly cute town, filled with many single family houses. Although filled with multiple antique buildings and houses that offered tours, we decided to only explore the most famous one, Buckman Tavern.

The tour, at just under an hour, surprisingly long for a house with fewer than half a dozen rooms, was nevertheless fun because the guide knew his history. As photography was prohibited, here's, in writing, some of my observations and some things he mentioned:

• He described a dirty, nasty drink the tavern served, made with various alcohols, a heated steel rod, and a raw egg.
• He pointed out how the owners chose the dimension of the floorboards due to how the British taxed them. The different tax treatment came about because the British wanted to ensure large lumber was available for building its navy. I forget the details, and can’t easily find additional information on the web.
• When cooking in the tavern's brick oven, the cook puts "baker's cake" (cracker) flour underneath the other food to prevent the other food from burning. One could eat the crackers later, if one so desired.
• We spotted a hefty sausage squeezer.
• The beds have a "sleep tight" rope nailed to the wood. Its purpose was to prevent the mattresses from falling into the hay, hence avoiding bed bugs.
• He repeated an often alleged relationship between the expression "mind your Ps and Qs" and the bartender keeping a tally of how many drinks of each size a patron drank. I know, however, many other stories of this expression’s origin exist, and there’s not much historical evidence with which to decide what’s true and what’s false. Here’s more information.

After the tour, we strolled around the green, then jumped in the car to head to our lunch destination, Nashoba Brook Bakery & Cafe. It was farther than I expected given the guidebook description, and surprisingly obscure/hard to find. I'm afraid I made people unhappy because lunch was so late. I think, however, that they forgave me because the place was satisfying, cute, and good. I can’t remember exactly what we ate, but I do recall at least a pretty tasty roast beef with cheddar sandwich, and a grilled vegetables with hummus sandwich. There was also a grapefruit, accompanied by a discussion about how to eat it.

After lunch, we went to Concord. Concord's downtown is definitely cuter than Lexington's, though I can't comment on it much because we only drove through it on our way to Concord's most famous site, the North Bridge (part of Minute Man National Historic Park). We looked at the bridge and wandered around the vicinity, then drove south to Walden Pond.

Walden Pond was quite crowded: not with tourists, but rather with beach-goers. Not only does the pond have a beach and allow swimming, it also has the associated amenities such as an ice cream stand. Many people took advantage of the beach knowing that this was likely the season's last gasp at summer.

After Walden Pond, we returned to Cambridge. Di Yin and I had been given tickets to the performance of the China National Peking (Beijing) Opera Company. We got in the T and immediately headed to it. Here’s the route we took this evening, starting from where we got off the subway.

The show was analogous to how the SF Opera does promotional performances: a series of excerpts from famous works. I enjoyed the show. Admittedly, I probably would’ve enjoyed it more if I understood what the singers were saying. (There were no subtitles.) I’m told that, for many songs, due to the type of language used and the way words and sounds are elongated when sung, even native speakers do not understand what is being said.

Some singers were tremendous. Some were still in training. Even without understanding the words, I could easily identify the variation in quality. The best singers were world-class.

The audience was mostly old Chinese people. It was clear the opera company is a government agency reaching out to this populace. Near the end of the show, they sang “I am a citizen of China” and encouraged people to visit the new China (with the changes that are taking place due to the Olympics). Incidentally, the show was presented in a large auditorium that felt like it belonged in a high school.

After the opera, we ambulated for an hour through the Back Bay and Cambridge, passing MIT, until we made it to Punjabi Dhaba, a cute Indian restaurant, for a very late dinner/snack. We then headed to a famous ice cream place for dessert but were disappointed to find it closed. This wasn't a major loss: I got to try it on another day.