Quincy Market and Little Italy: Beantown, Part 3

Aki and Baba at breakfast in Quincy Market

Since we only had a few days in Beantown, we didn't want to waste any time seeing the sights. We also had Jiji and Baba to pace us, since they were traveling with Eric's uncle from Japan, Shupopoji.

We caught the Green Line by ourselves not too late in the morning, headed off to Government Center, and met up with Jiji, Baba, and Shupopoji at Quincy Market for a little breakfast.


It's hard to figure out how much to bring with you when you leave the hotel. Sure, there's places you can buy milk, and places you can ask to have it heated up, but it also gives you a lot of peace of mind to know you've got a few extra cartons in an icepack and a Tommee Tippee you plug into an outlet (thanks, Auntie Lisa!) to heat that stuff up.

Here's the downside to overpacking, though: It gets heavy. Real heavy. Especially when you're also toting around a 26-pound toddler, an umbrella stroller, snacks, and changes of clothes for everyone. Yikes! It's a good thing we didn't bite the bullet and buy a DSLR for this trip: Our iPhone and P&S were good enough.

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After finding a nice, greasy combo of bacon, sausage, potatoes, toast, and eggs, we strolled out to see the Atlantic, then circled back to meet up with everyone and walk over to Little Italy.

Aki catnapped for a spell on his Mama's shoulder, as we passed a section of the Freedom Walk, including Paul Revere's house.

Dad popped into a couple of trattorias, then decided on a little place called La Summa with the nicest proprietor you could hope for. A bunch of silver-haired ladies were having a reunion in the front room--they'd all grown up in the area and have been meeting up for a celebratory lunch once a year for the last 40 years or so--and cooed over Aki after he woke up.


Catnap outside Paul Revere's House

It was decent, hardy Italian fare, washed down with a couple of brews, and the folks at La Summa were kind enough to give us some milk AND warm it up for us. We even managed to change Aki's diaper in one of La Summa's cozy little restrooms.

After lunch, though, it was time for the main event: Gelato down the street at Vittorio's.

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Music: Top Five Tracks of 2010 (So Far)

2010 is another banner year for indies, with some wunderkinds from the pre-Tens issuing sophomore and junior albums (Vampire Weekend, July's new album by M.I.A., Band of Horses) and some new (or at least semi-new) acts getting their fair share (or more) of buzz.

Folks seem to be raving about She & Him, for example, M-Ward's "Swell Season" with Zooey Deschanel. Sure, it's charming, but it's also kind of bloodless. On the other hand, I go gaga about pretty much anything Danger Mouse does, so Broken Bells (his duo with Shins' frontman James Mercer) has me itching to run down to Amoeba.

Since "Top Ten" lists seem to be out like the seventies (call it a sign of our ever-shrinking attention spans) we're cutting our list down to a much shorter, tighter, and more manageable five songs from the first half of 2010, released between January and June.

Below the cut, listen to a playlist of tunes we've had on constant rotation, complete with (sometimes snarky) commentary. Mix, enjoy, repeat.

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Bloodbuzz Ohio (The National)

So good it could be a whole list in itself. That's all. Or as an old friend of mine put it, you just want to lock yourself in a dark room and listen to this track again and again. And again. And again.

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Me and Jane Doe (Charlotte Gainsbourg and Beck)

There's a lot of first-class brooding and pensiveness on IRM, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Beck's collaboration that straddles 2009 and 2010. I'm a little surprised at how solid the whole thing is, since CG has kind of a flat, detached singing and songwriting style (she's a "chanteuse," after all). But this track not only has a catchy, tongue-in-cheek, spinning across the meadows upbeat-ness to it, it also has an irresistibly free-wheeling and elegant guitar hook (plus what sounds like Javanese gamelan samples)—vintage Beck.

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The Ghost Inside (Broken Bells)

Like I said, Brian Burton (aka Danger Mouse) could record an album of vuvuzela duets and I'd be all over it. But while I found the first couple of advance tracks from Broken Bells (Mongrel Heart, The High Road) intriguing but not indispensable, "The Ghost Inside" has just the right mix of fat, measured beats I'd expect from Danger Mouse (hand claps for the win!) and an unexpected, Bee Gees-worthy falsetto from James Mercer. Why yes, I'll have another (insert your favorite alcoholic beverage here).

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Beach House

Norway (Beach House)

Beach House's music makes me want to take a long walk on a wintry shore on some other planet. There's just a touch of Cocteau Twins in the dreamy reverb and breathy backup vocals, but then you have that warbling, organ-grinder wallpaper of a pedal tone and the throb of that Hamm's "Land of Sky Blue Water" tom-tom. Beach House's songs are so loose and natural that you feel like you have all the time in the world—lor some other world—leven though the track lasts just over four minutes. More, please.

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White Sky (Vampire Weekend)

Ezra Koenig and Co. quickly became 2008's The Strokes, the band that everyone either loved to love or loved to hate. I never stopped liking their peppy, kwassa kwassa-inflected indie pop, but then again, I'm a fortysomething in a 34-year old's body, an "All Songs Considered" poster child. (The other day at the polls, a gray-haired fortysomething voter grinned at my T-shirt, which referenced the classic Nintendo's video game "Contra," and said "Great album!") I wasn't surprised, then, that Vampire Weekend's sophomore album was another collection of candy and earworms. What I was surprised about was a post by Momus, one of my favorite and perennially hipper-than-thou, crustily forward-looking artists/musicians/bloggers, wherein he declared that he dug Vampire Weekend's new album. The band had lobbied for his support for their first album, but to no avail. What won the crotchety Momus over this time? He gave it up to Koenig's "charm offensive." Come to think of it, that might be a better name for the band.

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Copley Square Hotel: Beantown, Part 2

Here's one piece of advice we'd give to anyone traveling with a toddler or infant: Ask your hotel for a refrigerator.

The folks at the Copley Square Hotel in Boston—a slickly remodeled boutique hotel in (like all of Boston) an antique building situated conveniently near the T in an upscale neighborhood—were kind enough to reserve the one refrigerator available for us.

It was just a tiny thing, but since there was a Shaw's (somewhere between a Bristol Farm and a Von's, according to Eric) just down the street, we were able to load up with milk each night, and more than a few bottles of water, and freeze our ice pack for walking around the city each day. Trust us: It's worth asking!



Another essential piece of advice is to travel with your in-laws. Not only did Aki's Jiji and Uncle meet us at the airport and help us lug our luggage laden with toddler goodies through Boston's mass transit system, but Jiji and Baba helped us lug around our milk and snack-heavy each day and made it possible for us to, oh, eat every now and then.

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A sleek, trendy bar for the younger set fronts the hotel (crisp black modern lines, plush cushions, and a "fireplace" composed of dozens of faux frosted glass candles), and there are free wine tastings every night from 5-6 p.m. which, as anyone who knows us could tell you, is like the icing on the cake. Granted, every time we've come to Boston we've tasted wine and it's always been from California, but who's going to complain when it's free?

With its restored-to-trendiness/art deco feel, the Copley Square Hotel reminded us of some of the boutique-y places we've stayed at in San Francisco or Greece. Following another parent guidebook's advice, we ate a meal or two in the hotel (again courtesy of Shaw's!) to help make the place feel like "home" for Aki (and also saving a couple of bucks in a relatively pricey tourist trap like Boston!).

Oh, and our last piece of advice about traveling with a toddler is to have a friend get you the hook ups: The Copley Square Hotel isn't exactly budget, especially during graduation season (contrary to Spinal Tap's assertions), but Kano was able to find us a great deal at the travel agency where she worked before moving on to bigger and better things. Thanks, Kano!

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First Flight: Beantown, Part 1

In the weeks leading up to our trip to Boston—our first airplane trip with Aki—Yuri and I were pretty wound up. I, for one, literally lost sleep worrying about how it would be.

Not only was it going to be Aki's first time up in the air (and our first time traveling in an airplane as parents), but it was going to take six hours.

How many times had I had a toddler behind or near me on other flights, kicking the back of my seat, fussing, or just plain hollering their poor little lungs out because of the pressure on their ears? And didn't I still have some bad memories of plane flights myself as a child, particularly the hellishly long flight to the Philippines my parents took me on when I was three (with stopovers in Hong Kong and Tokyo, if I remember right)?

We got all kinds of advice from folks who took the plunge before us, some of it helpful, some of it not so. (We refrained, for example, from trying to slip Aki some Brandy before takeoff).

So, combining all of that advice into careful packing (by Yuri), a battle plan, and a kind of kamikaze fatalism (by Chris), we brought plenty of books, toys, and snacks to keep him entertained, happy, and chewing (to help pop his ears). Yuri also got up early on the day of the flight to make a whole bunch of musubi (8 spam and 8 tuna!).

And for the most part, we didn't need most of it (except for the musubi, of course: we finished most of that!) The novelty of being on an airplane kept Aki occupied for a good chunk of the time.

There was also a little redheaded boy named Jasper sitting in front of us who was about the same age as Aki, and a little Filipina girl sitting behind him. They kept popping over the backs and fronts of Aki's seat like prairie dogs playing peekaboo.

(We befriended Jasper's mom at the end of the flight, thinking we'd never see her again, and then bumped into her a few days later at Tufts during Eric's graduation: small world!)

We had some of the kindest stewardesses in the world—a sharp contrast to the short-tempered hags on our return flight. These kindly ladies were totally patient with our newbie fussiness and worries and warmed up Aki's bottles without batting an eye.

From Boston 2010

Poor Yuri: The day of the flight was also her birthday, so it was spent for the most part in worry, transit, then relief. But Aki, little prince that he is (most of the time!), gave her the best gift possible: He was an absolute dream on his first flight.

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