A Sunday Afternoon in Boston...

Our friends Chris and Rachel suggested we take a trip into the city to tour the Harpoon Brewery and go ice skating.  In that order (I know that's not a full sentence but that is how people write these days).  The Harpoon Brewery is located in the downtown wharf area, near Barking Crab, and the financial district.  This was my first time seeing the inside of a brewery, and it was a lot of fun (Catherine is actually a brewery pro and has been to the original Guinness brewery in Ireland).  Harpoon only has two facilities - the main one here in Boston, and a larger one in Winchester, Vermont.  The Boston brewery puts out 1,800 barrels of beer a week!  So odds are, if you had a Harpoon, it came from this one.  We got to smell the different kinds of hops and see the whole process from start to finish.  At the end of the tour we tasted each beer.  One of our favorites was the Leviathon, a fairly heavy session beer (beer snob term for heavier type of beer you sit down and drink over an extended period of time, i.e. Guinness).  We also liked the Pilgrim Brew, which won first place in a home brewing contest put on by Harpoon a few years ago.  The Pilgrim was fairly dark, and was intended to be similar to something the Massachusetts Pilgrims might actually have made.  It included molasses and some other unusual ingredients, and had sort of a smoky flavor.  It was surprisingly good.  Catherine and I added a Harpoon fridge magnet to our ever growing collection, which dates back to the first one she sent me of the City of Richmond while I was still living in Chicago (awww).

 

 Our little tasting glasses.

What the Harpoon employees affectionately refer to as "Beer Heaven"

After the brewery tour we drove to Boston Common and went ice skating on Frog Pond.  I am essentially a pro figure skater, but unfortunately we don't have any video of my triple axles and other crazy Scott Hamilton spin moves on the ice.  We did have a lot of fun though.  It kind of reminded me of my middle school days of skating it up at the Peninsula Family Skating Center in Newport News, VA.  Nobody fell, which was good. 

 

*Quick add-in by Catherine...  I am really sad that we didn't take more pictures at Frog Pond (low lighting leads to bad pics with our camera).  I really wish I could have permanent proof of how Curt tucked his khakis into his skates.  hehehe!

We ate at a delicious Vietnamese Place in China Town where I had a giant bowl of Pho Beef Soup (as opposed to the spicy rare beefballs, which are evidently a customer favorite).

Welp, I've fulfilled my husbandly duty of completing my blogging quota for the month!  Thanks for hanging in there and reading!