FIELD TRIP: BOSTON, QUICKLY

Libby K. Hanaway
2 days ago
11 min read

Updated: 6 hours ago

“In Boston they ask, how much does he know? In New York, how much is he worth? In Philadelphia, who were his parents?” —Mark Twain

"That's all I claim for Boston—that it is the thinking center of the continent, and therefore of the planet." —Oliver Wendell Holmes

"We say the cows laid out Boston. Well, there are worse surveyors." —Ralph Waldo Emerson

One of the best things about a trip to a new country, new city, or even a new part of town is that your local knowledge can grow from Beginner Level to Intermediate Level in a very short time. Way back on Memorial Day Weekend, Rick and I bumped up our Boston IQ by a few degrees, which was great because Boston seems to be an extremely high-IQ city.

For one reason or another, I never had the chance to visit Boston before this trip. And Boston was not even our actual destination on this Memorial Day Weekend. Instead, it straddled the front and back end of our MAINE event — nephew Jack's graduation from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, ME. But Logan Airport was a central landing spot, we had friends living in Cambridge, and Rick had a Sunday night scheduled with Bruce Springsteen at The Garden, so our Boston bookends made perfect sense.

Before our visit, here was the general sum of my Boston knowledge:

The Boston Tea Party
The Boston Massacre
Paul Revere
Swan Boats
Good Will Hunting
The Boston Celtics
Boston Cream Pie
Boston Baked Beans
And, of course, Make Way for Ducklings, the foundation of my original (and our girls' original) base of Boston knowledge:

With a total of 38 hours split before and after Bowdoin, we jammed in 60 hours' worth of Boston.

THURSDAY

We had no official agenda for late Thursday afternoon, but our free bus from the airport took us right past the Boston Public Library en route to the nearby Marriott. The building looked impressive from the bus window, so boom: we had our two-hour plan before meeting our friends for dinner in Cambridge ✅.

I am at home in any kind of library — town libraries, mobile libraries, tiny branch libraries wedged in shopping centers, little free libraries filled with the most random collections — but I had never seen a library such as this. Completed in 1895 as a "palace for the people," the McKim Building of Boston's Central Library is in a class by itself. In 1986, the National Park Service designated the McKim Building in Copley Square a National Historic Landmark, and every turn is a stunner.

We marched up the steps, gawked at the ethereal lobby ceiling, and then made our way down the hall to the right — past the Map Room Tea Lounge and through the fountained courtyard that looks like Italy — into a temporary exhibition called "Declarations: Printing a New Nation." How could we skip this small, historic expo, what with Rick's 37 years in the oldfangled but persevering print industry and our family's years and years of watching Nicholas Cage in National Treasure?

Two hours at the library seemed to be about four hours too few. On a return trip, I'll be studying for the bar exam (jk, reading a novel) in the famous Bates Hall Reading Room, doing a puzzle in the Normal B. Leventhal Map & Education Center, and then lounging with tea and a crumbly scone inside the Map Room Tea Lounge. I really hope it's raining or snowing outside — all the better for burrowing inside.

In summary:

"K E E P L I B R A R I E S A L I V E !"

As we Ubered to our friends' home in Cambridge on Thursday evening — crossing the Charles River and passing blocks and blocks of Harvard University construction zones — Rick and I could feel our intelligence improving by the minute. Everything around us just made us feel smarter. [We probably should have felt inferior by comparison ... but as Theodore Roosevelt (might/might not) have said, "COMPARISON IS THE THIEF OF JOY." Teddy, you (maybe) were so right 👍.]

Our Uber dropped us off at Rick + Jeanne's townhouse on a block just as historic and charming as you might imagine. They announced we'd be eating dinner at their place, but first, a walk around the block:

Then back to their place for a rigorous exam — a blind tasting of Cain Five's 2017 and 2013. Harvard paid off — we all knew which one was which 🍷🤓🍷!

Though we had connected with Rick + Jeanne in various configurations over the years, we hadn't been together as a foursome for over 27 years. Back in the later-90s, they lived on the Upper West Side while we lived in Westport, CT with Baby E. We dropped E off at their apartment for occasional NYC afternoons — Rick and I would take in a play or a museum while they strolled her around Central Park. What a life, kid!! From one of my favorite afternoons of the era:

Then time marched on. We lived on opposite coasts for over two decades, raised four daughters in total, and always remained in touch. And that is why it was 1:30 a.m. on a school night — after hours of nonstop stories and nonstop laughing — when we finally brought our dishes to the sink and said goodbye until next time. Cheers (with a 2013 Cain Five) to old friends. True national treasures!

FRIDAY

Greetings from downtown Boston and Beacon Hill, where the scene continuously zigzags between the old and the new. But mostly old!

Rick reserved advance tickets for a 10:30 a.m. tour along The Freedom Trail, which meant we needed to wake up by 8:30 a.m., which was very hard after going to bed at 2:15 a.m. when our normal is ~9:45 p.m. Our tour guide was the woman pictured above, but I didn't catch her name because I was standing off to the side at the start of our tour, fielding a very 21st-century cell phone call from C about her impending age-26 drop from our health insurance and her info-gathering about Colorado's health insurance exchange. Looking at our tour guide now, she strikes me as a Mary; thank you, Mary, for the breadth and depth of your knowledge and your commitment to staying in character during our American Revolution education that morning.

In case you were not paying attention to American history in high school, this is how you (re)learn it!. Mary had all the stories plus a few good jokes!

Among other nuggets of information, we learned that John Hancock — he of the giant Declaration signature — was a very wealthy party-thrower who (happily, it seemed) also threw his influence and $$$ behind the Revolutionary cause. As the story goes, he made his signature so large and distinctive that the King would not need glasses to read it. Hancock threw shade before shade was shade!

Also (and although the Samuel Adams Beers company denies it), the story goes that Sam Adams was a not-very-attractive gentleman, and the beer logo designer subbed in the more handsome Paul Revere instead. Shocking if true! Mary also told a joke about the Beantown Pub located across the street from the Granary Burying Ground, where Adams and many other Revolution-era luminaries lie in rest: it's the only place where there's a cold Sam Adams both inside and across the street 🍺🪦🥁. When I googled the pub just now, the website reads: "The only pub in the world where you can drink a cold Sam Adams' while viewing a cold Sam Adams" so I guess the joke was not a Mary-original after all. But still: nice bit of dark comedy, Mary!

BONUS — WHEN YOU ARE HUNGRY AND FEELING HISTORICAL:

Take your pick! Along The Freedom Trail, you've got the Bell in Hand Tavern (1795), Ye Olde Union Oyster House (1826), and Ye Olde Chipotle, (2011 in a building from 1718):

BONUS — HOTEL TRIVIA:

The Omni Parker House hotel is unofficially located along the Freedom Trail; although it came along some eighty years after the Revolution, it provides several good facts for trivia night!

Charles Dickens lived here during his 1867-68 American reading tour
In 1953, John F. Kennedy proposed to Jacqueline Bouvier in the hotel's dining room
Ghosts are said to haunt the building
And — returning to the topic of food — The Parker House is the birthplace of both the Boston Cream Pie and the Parker House roll. The hotel generously offers its pie recipe here, and the James Beard Foundation provides one for Parker House Rolls. I doubt I'll ever make either, but let me know if you do!

Along the Trail, we also passed through the historic Haymarket, crossed over the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway made possible by The Big Dig, and ended our tour at Paul Revere's cute but very low-light house situated at the gateway to Boston's North End:

We concluded Boston: Part 1 by wandering the streets of the North End's Little Italy at lunchtime, grabbing some slices at Ernesto's Pizza. It felt very Old World in a 1970's storefront-style.

FRIDAY AND SATURDAy IN MAINE

Middle-of-the-weekend intermission 🦞! The whole point of our trip was to celebrate nephew Jack's graduation from Bowdoin College, but I'm guessing more people might recognize the area's big retailer in Freeport, ME v. the nearby college itself:

AT BOWDOIN:

Jack graduated with a degree in Physics and a minor in Biology. We understood four words in the title of his Honors Project, three of which were prepositions. (Velocity, something, something, something, something, something). He's a real slacker.

A few Bowdoin observations:

The college was founded in 1794, and the whole place is steeped in tradition, including a — like a movie scene — college alumni wandering the leafy campus in straw boater hats with black ribbons. Very old-school preppy!
A BATHROOM STORY: Also per tradition, Bowdoin was an all-male college until 1971. I might have guessed this timeline when I was in line to use one of the two bathrooms available to women during the ceremony. I timed my visit for when the graduates started crossing the stage; Jack was in the Fs, which seemed safe. The first-floor women's room had a line as long as you might see at a concert, so I race-walked toward the small arrow pointing to another restroom up a twisty staircase, congratulating myself on my sharp powers of observation. I climbed the old steps up to the top level to — as it turned out — the not-so-secret bathroom.

That's the moment when each new woman joining the line discovered that the building's two available restrooms were each single-use-only, presumably designed for the rare, stray woman who found herself inside that building after the invention of modern plumbing. It should not surprise you that we women that day were resourceful! Someone had a phone to contact someone on the ground who could then report the current letter of the alphabet on stage. Bowdoin is a tiny school, so the graduates were moving rapidly along. Most line-women were there for G-kids and later, so that was lucky. We determined that, if needed, moms could line-skip over a lesser relative like me, an aunt. It was all so suspenseful and collaborative! When it was finally my turn, I saw actual COBWEBS along the old wooden windowsill, maybe centuries old. I can only hope we all made it back in time — relieved to say I did!

Bowdoin's mascot is the polar bear, which — contrary to my original assumption — is no mere smart-school eccentricity. There is a reason. The more you know 🐻‍❄️💫!
Bowdoin conferred an honorary degree upon Evan Gershkovich, a 2014 alum and Wall Street Journal reporter who in 2023 was imprisoned in Russia on false espionage charges. You can read the full story here (and he has a much-anticipated memoir coming out this fall). Anyway, as he accepted his degree, the crowd jumped up with a long, full, hearty standing ovation.

SUNDAY

En route back to Boston:

If you're ever in the postcard town of Portsmouth, NH, find this old brick alleyway for France-in-New-England pastries at Elephantine Bakery and a visit to the Salt Cellar, which is a salt-seller located down a flight of stairs in an actual basement cellar 🧂. It was raining too hard for more alley exploration — plus we needed to hustle back to BOS for our night with Bruce.

AND FINALLY, BRUCE:

Anyone who knows Rick knows he's been a Bruce Springsteen fan since forever. He's sung along at over 50 shows throughout the years and across the country. (I have been to five, and I've loved each one.)

I like to think both the alphabet and Bruce brought Rick and me together. In our junior year of high school, Rick Hanaway sat directly in front of me, Libby Kennedy, during American Studies. He was cute, funny, and genuinely nice (high school trifecta), and I thought he might be impressed if I knew every word to every song on The River, his favorite Bruce album at the time. That is some BLEAK music, but that didn't stop me from memorizing each song and strategically referencing them every now and then. My little Bruce trick worked 😏. And despite the gloomy themes, I still love many of those sad songs. So thank you, dark-era Bruce Springsteen!

Rain roared outside our dinner back in the North End at Fillippo, home of the Peanut Butter Martini — too weird to pass up and surprisingly good!

The rain kept roaring during our short walk to The Garden and while in the long, wet line outside. The weather was wicked (to borrow a Boston term) awful, but the concert itself was wicked good: Bruce (age 76) still singing strong and lighting up the crowd; the horns, harmonica, and infectious camaraderie of the E Street Band; the long history; the loud, loyal fanhood; and more. But the best part for me was the 10-ish-year-old girl and her parents sitting/dancing right next to us. With her boxy glasses and long, wavy, ponytailed hair, she appeared to be the bookiest bookworm, a look I already adore. She unabashedly sang along with her parents and held their hands as they danced. She and I did a little jig together during American Land. It was so WHOLESOME and ENDEARING and FUN!

So that was our short adventure in Boston and Maine ... and then we were back at Logan at 5:30 a.m. for our 7 a.m. flight. Maximum weekend, as my dad liked to say!

Boston deserves its own trip — and Maine does, too. In Maine, we need to visit the many little towns along the craggy coast and eat genuine Maine lobster rolls. Back in Boston, I would like to ride a Swan Boat (of course 🦢) and declare my own winner in the Mike's Bakery v. Modern Pastry cannoli wars. (Rick + Jeanne say Modern Pastry all the way.) Rick H. would definitely take in a game at Fenway. We'd walk around Beacon Hill and its perfectly preserved Acorn Street, visit the Museum of Fine Arts, and ... what else?! Send in your favorite Boston must-See/Do/Eat!

EXTRA GOOD

ALSO LINKED THROUGH THE EXTRA GOOD PAGE HERE

SUNDAY, JUNE 28, 2026

1._GOOD PEOPLE: This has nothing to do with Boston, but there is a connection to Make Way for Ducklings. E moved from TX to CO last last week (🥳), and the day after arrival, the three of us met E's friendly husband-and-wife landlord team before we unloaded the U-Haul. As we toured the neighborhood, the wife said, "Oh, do you want to see the duck?!" YES. So after walking a block to E's new mailbox, we took a shortcut through an alleyway where a mama duck had found safe harbor in an empty flower pot outside a garage. In response, the garage owner had created a duck egg protection center with an umbrella for shade and a nearby plastic container of water. The garage door rolled up as we passed, and we stopped to talk to the good-hearted egg protector. She was worried — the eggs were past their incubation period per her calculations, so she didn't know if this was more of a vigil than an expectant space. We stood there, suddenly becoming a semi-circle of worry.

E is temporarily living with us — an hour away from her new place — and a few days ago her landlord texted her the happy news: three eggs hatched! That duck mom knew exactly what she was doing, and E landed in an exceptionally welcoming neighborhood for waterfowl and humans alike 🦆🏡 .

2._GOOD LEARNING AND INFORMATION: In the spirit of the American Revolution and our nation's 250th birthday celebration on Saturday, I am pre-suggesting Ken Burns' new PBS documentary series, The American Revolution. I have not seen it yet, but my premature Project Hail Mary rec turned out well, so I feel good about this one, too. It's a time commitment, but also very timely!

I'm backlogged with my To Be Watched list, so for now we can all watch the trailer:

3._GOOD ENTERTAINMENT: If you're already thinking about the American Revolution, you might also be thinking about Hamilton. And if so, you'll probably enjoy this performance from the 2025 Tony Awards, where many original Hamilton cast members took the stage 10 years after their debut — not in costume, fyi — to run through a four-minute medley of production highlights. One of my favorite songs — "The Room Where It Happens" — made the cut, although another — "Satisfied" — did not. Those are the breaks! And stage alert: Christopher Jackson — the original George Washington — is bringing his wise George back to Broadway in September. You can also still watch the whole filmed performance of Hamilton on Disney Plus, which I still do occasionally, especially for my man Leslie Odom, Jr.