Two Hours at Harvard Square

It used to be that it was worth my while to stay over a Saturday night in Boston on the tail end of my trips to Yankee to take advantage of the much, much cheaper “Saturday night stay” airfares on Air Canada. Now that this advantage has largely been eliminated, I’m left to enjoy the city in little time packets before or after heading up here to New Hampshire.

And so early this evening, after catching the end of the meetings I’d mostly missed at Yankee’s Boston office, I headed over to Harvard Square for a bit. I managed to squeeze some of my favourite things into a short space of time:

• I visited the Globe Corner Bookstore, which is a fantastic travel bookstore. It’s on Church St. just up the street from the movie theatre. I found a great book on southern France that I’d not seen elsewhere.
• I had a wonderful vegetarian meal at Veggie Planet, located under the bookstore and sharing space with the venerable Club Passim. I’m not entirely sure what I had — I just ordered the daily dinner special — but it involved brown rice, goat cheese, avocados and black beans. It was amazing. Also had a great elderberry iced tea.
• I browsed the magazine stands at the Harvard Coop and at Out of Town News, located across the street from each other just around the corner. Got a good map of France and a nice small Moleskin at the Coop too.
• I finished the night with some sort of exotic hot chocolate drink at Starbucks — it was called “Contata” or “Tochino” or something like that. 6oz. of chocolate heaven.

Then it was in the car and up to Peterborough, NH where I type this on the plentiful WiFi of the much-referenced Jack Daniel’s Motor Inn.