Adventures in Boston

Friday, Denisa and I had tickets to go see Wynton Marsalis play jazz in Boston. I’d bought them a few months ago, and I’d been really looking forward to it. We’d lined up things for Daniela and MC (and Ferris), gotten a hotel, planned everything out, and all we had to do was have Friday go right. I had to be in Bangor for a library meeting, so I’d be leaving from that, rushing home to get Denisa, and then hurrying down to Boston, hoping we’d miss the traffic, so that we’d make it to the concert in time.

Everything was going well. My meeting had been successful, and I was looking at getting home maybe a little early, even. Someone called me on the phone, but I didn’t recognize the number, so I let it go to voice mail. When I got home, I went straight to packing, then checked the message.

The concert had been canceled due to illness. (Wynton or someone in the band caught COVID, perhaps?) So just like that, Denisa and I now had everything lined up so we could go down to Boston and . . . hang out for the evening.

That sounded like a missed opportunity, but I looked around and saw My Fair Lady was on tour from Broadway. I checked the tickets. There were cheap ones in not great locations, and expensive ones in better locations. I went with the expensive route. (Ever since I bought the cheap-o tickets to A Gentelman’s Guide to Love and Murder on Broadway, I’ve been a firm believer in getting good seats.) We rushed down and made it with time to spare.

The show was really good. Solid on acting, singing, and playing, though with a musical like My Fair Lady, it’s hard for me to separate it from the film adaptation, which I’ve seen many (many) times. The theater (Boston Opera House) was incredibly ornate. They had a string quartet playing for people as they came up the stairs in the lobby, and it was one of the nicest theaters I’ve been to. It wasn’t Wynton Marsalis, but it was still lots of fun.

For dinner, we ate at a vegetarian place called Life Alive. Denisa really liked it, though it was a tad too healthy for me. We were staying in Cambridge, which was a fun area of the city to be in, right next to MIT and close to Harvard. The student presence was strong. (The hotel was one of the free Marriott nights we get each year with the credit card.)

The next day, we headed to the Boston Temple before making our way back home by way of Portland. Stopped off for Indian food at a place called Taj, and shopped a bit at Trader Joe’s as well. All in all, a great trip, even if it wasn’t exactly what we’d planned. (I’ve got tickets to Sweeney Todd next month. If those fall through, I will be much more disappointed.)

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