A Weekend Worth Writing About. Finally.

The boyfriend came to Boston for the long weekend and I ate and drank enough to make up for the past four weeks of eating small healthy meals and drinking minimally. It’s a trade off: Have no life, but fit into a smaller pants size (which I do now!) and save a lot of money, or go out, eat and drink more, stay up past 9:30 each night and feel bad about buying multiple $7 beers. I’m trying to find a happy medium. The first step is finding people to do the second option with.

Anyhow. Every morning, the boyfriend and I set out to find a bloody mary. This is harder than I expected in Boston. The first day, killing time until our real brunch destination opened, we walked up fancy-pants Newbury Street, only to find you couldn’t sit on their restaurant patios (any of them) and just drink, you had to order food. Of course.

So we went around the corner to another bar. To our disappointment, this bar only served beer and wine and mimosas. So we kept on. We walked around the rest of the block to Dillon’s, which was just being opened by two sorority girls. We waited at the bar for one to appear. 15 minutes later when she was done eating her hangover breakfast in the back, we were drinking watered-down tomato juice.

Does it have to be this hard?

Finally, we made it to Corner Tavern, the brunch destination I found on Yelp (despite the snotty reviewers on Yelp, the Yelp app has been really handy as a location-based bar finder).

Corner Tavern didn’t disappoint. I mean, it would have had to be a smoldering pile of ashes for it to at that point. It’s nicely hidden below the sidewalk and without fancy signage, so it's somewhat dark, with light coming in through the windows from above ground. The bartender was friendly. The few other people there seemed like regulars. Food was $8 a plate. Cheap and good, but portions were small (compared to brunch in Middle America). The bloody marys were good enough to have a second. I’d go back.

After brunch we walked over the Mass Ave. bridge into Cambridge and eventually landed at a newly built Irish bar called the Asgard. Unfortunate name, no? BTW, we did not plan on doing this bar crawl, it just sort of happened. You walk, it’s hot, you get thirsty, right? We had a beer at the world’s cleanest, quietest Irish bar and then walked another 1.75 miles to a place where we could kayak on the Charles River. After a morning of drinking and walking, kayaking was kind of exhausting. After kayaking we got ice cream at J.P. Lick’s in Harvard Square. That's right, ice cream, not booze! (Side note: Brad, a place called Christina's in Cambridge has burnt sugar ice cream. Maybe that's it?).

The next day started out at Eastern Standard, the restaurant and bar in Kenmore Square that was highly recommended by the bartender whose bar only served beer and wine. It was his idea of “The Best Bloody Mary.”

I’m a big fan of this place, and it’s close to my house. I’m totally taking Mom here when she comes to visit. And the bloody mary was the best of the weekend. However, the general Boston bloody mary seems way less spicy than other cities. We asked for spicy and the bartender offered jalepeno-infused vodka. Fine, but I want pepper and horseradish and Tabasco. We still didn’t get that. Is this typical? I am, after all, an east coast newbie. At least it had celery and two olives. Where’s the goddamn build-it-yourself bar around here? Am I about to claim I miss something in Dallas?

From there we proceeded to have a little adventure called “Going to Jamaica Plain.” And this is where I found my bar.

Unfortunately, my bar is a bus ride away and only takes cash. This just means I won’t wear it out or become a fixture. It’s called Brendan Behan Pub and it’s the kind of bar I was hoping I’d find a lot more of in Boston. They don’t serve food but you can bring it in from next door, they have a great beer selection, they allow dogs, they have excellent music and there’s enough old-time bar kitsch on the shelves, but in a good way, not a cliché way. The place is really small and has a mixed crowd who are clearly locals because nobody in the South End or Cambridge would venture to JP, I imagine. After the first beer, I was in love. I wanted to stay there all afternoon. But we had places to go, so after three beers, we went to find Jamaica Pond. You never know when or if you’ll come back to JP. Gotta see all the sights.

The pond is full of water and surrounded by trees. Crazy, right? I imagine on a good day it’s pretty nice but it had started mizzling (if it’s not sunny in Boston, it’s probably mizzling).

Needless to say, Sunday night everything hurt, especially my legs and liver, and I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Once you leave your 20s, two days of walking and day drinking with an hour of kayaking is something you should only do on occasion.

I should add, so you don’t think my weekend really centered around drinking, that Monday we went to see the reading of the Declaration of Independence at the Old State House, ate clam chowder, and went to a Red Sox game. Go America.