Patrick's Birthday and More

This past Saturday was Pat's 26th birthday. He spent the day golfing with the guys and then we went for dinner in Boston's north end. The north end is infamous for locally-owned Italian restaurants and the streets in the neighbourhood, in particular Hanover Street, are lined with them. Even though there are an abundance of restaurants to choose from, if you don't go early you'll be waiting in line for a while. There are a few restaurants in particular that always have lineups down the block. We went to a little restaurant called Artu. We've been there before and love it. I had a linguine dish with spicy red sauce, calamari, and mussels and Pat had the gnocchi with veal. It was delicious!

Dinner at Artu

Hanover St. in Boston's north end

Boston's north end is also known for their pastry shops. In particular, the rivalry between Mike's Pastry and Modern Pastry. People have their loyalty to one or the other...kind of like people do with Coke or Pepsi. Both always have lineups out the door. Pat and I have been to both, and both are fantastic. Personally, I would pick whichever one has the shortest line. Both shops have the most amazing cannolis EVER! We also discovered when we moved to our new place that there is a second Modern Pastry in downtown Medford, which never has lineups. Score!

We didn't bother to wait in line for cannolis because we had cupcakes waiting at home....which I made. YES, I have a slight obsession with cupcakes. I do enjoy eating them, but I enjoy making them even more! So for Pat's birthday I made him chocolate cupcakes with vanilla buttercream frosting. Yum Yum! Might I add that I made these with with my new KitchenAid mixer....works like a dream!

Sunday, as expected, was another photography adventure. Pat was borrowing a Nikon camera and lens from his photography class, so we were both carrying around digital SLRs . We sort of looked like the paparazzi.  Especially Pat, with that massive lens he borrowed.

Just to give you an idea....

It's GINORMOUS!!! Not to mention very expensive...

Anyway, there are a bunch of parks in Boston, so we decided to explore one we hadn't seen yet. There are actually six parks in this one area that all join together called the Emerald Necklace. These parks take up 1,000 acres and stretch five miles long. We explored the "Back Bay Fens" park. They have a rose garden, but unfortunately it was closed for the season. From the fence it looked beautiful.

The Emerald Necklace

Here are a few of the shots we took...

After our photography session in the park, we headed over to another more well known park, Boston Common. The Boston Pops Symphony Orchestra was putting on a free concert there to celebrate their 125th anniversary.  The Pops were great and it was really neat to see so many people just sitting in the park listening. We sat on the grass sipping our pumpkin spice lattes, while tackling Sudoku on our iPhones. It was a fantastic Sunday indeed!

The Pops