Wicked awesome times in Beantown

One of the benefits of road trips is that they offer these sorts of exchanges:

“Huh, that billboard says there’s a Pez factory coming up.”

“Hmm, well, let's go!"

And just like that, the Marciniaks found ourselves at the Pez factory and museum, “over 4,000 square feet dedicated to all things Pez!”  It was pretty epic.

Look at that excitement!

After our impromptu Pez stop, we arrived in Boston.  Naturally, one of the main attractions (for Dustin, anyway) was the Sam Adams brewery tour and accompanying free beer.  I have been to so many breweries that I think I am qualified to lead tours… I can tell you all about the hops and the brew kettles and whatnot (in spite of the fact that I don’t drink beer).  Dustin gets a bonus since he gets my beer samples.  Lucky guy.

Dustin is a happy man.  As he should be.

Now, for the main attraction, Fenway Park!  I was immediately struck by how small the stadium seemed, especially compared to the behemoth where the Yankees play.  It’s a pretty great ballpark.  Dustin awards it the rare A.  He hates the Red Sox, so that's saying something.

Apparently Dustin did not want to look at the Boston fans so he helpfully closed his eyes.

Here I am at our seats.  It was chilly!

I mean, you’ve got your practically on-the-field seats, your Green Monster, your manual scoreboard… but they’ve also modernized it with the videoboard (designed to look like the manual scoreboard, which is smart), and they had good food and beverage options.  Interestingly, this was the first park to advertise “healthy” options as such – fruit cups, pieces of whole fruit, hummus dip – it seems like in this day and age, more stadiums would pick this up.  I wonder how it sells… I got a fruit cup, and it was pretty good.  The food here was also more reasonably priced than some other stadiums.

Gametime!

Ortiz in action - one of his two doubles

 As for the game, the Boston fans were pretty solid (as Dustin put it, Boston fans IN Boston are far more tolerable than Boston fans outside of it).  There was a bit of beach-ball and wave nonsense going on in the bleachers, but most of the crowd was sporting their Red Sox gear and leading the cheer charge.  It took Boston until the 7^th inning to get any kind of offense going and things were looking dire, but Toronto’s bullpen stunk.  The 1-0 Toronto lead quickly devolved into a 5-1 Boston rally, leading to yet another home win for the Marciniak road trip record.

These teams should be paying us to attend their home games at this point.

Most of the rest of our time in Boston was spent following the Freedom Trail, which is a walking trail around Boston that leads to many historic sites, and visiting Harvard/Cambridge.  We definitely got plenty of walking in during this leg of the trip (ok, it’s been a lot of walking everywhere).  Good thing we have so much driving to do to get to Cooperstown and Toronto!

Boston Public Gardens - it's so pretty!

Harvard Yard - also pretty!

Bunker Hill Monument - Dustin climbed all 294 steps (naturally).  I was, for the first time, thankful for my knee injury which gave me a good reason NOT to accompany him!

USS Constitution - one of the last stops on the Freedom Trail.

 Next up: The Mecca of Baseball