People rarely put a city’s central library on a list of must sees. The New York Public Library reading room is an obvious exception, and the Library of Congress is in a class by itself. So when my waitress at Cafe G at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum urged me to check out the Boston Public Library and take the tour offered once daily, I listened.
Fortunately admission is free and the tour is also free. This is a theme at the Boston Public Library. “Free For All” is carved in stone over the entrance. The Boston Public Library is the first large library in the nation. It was remarkable that the founding donors who started with a few rooms of books to lend in 1848 opened it to all–even the hordes of Irish and German immigrants who crowded the city at that time.
The Central Library building on Copley Square occupies a full city block. It has occupied this third home since 1895. They spared no expense on the art and architecture, hence the value of a tour from a well-trained docent like Gail. We met in the front foyer and the tour covered a lot of ground from outside the entrance to the third floor galleries to the inner courtyard. It was wonderful to learn more about the politics and controversy that gave us such a beautiful community asset.
Gail explained the blanks on the John Singer Sargent gallery, but only alluded to some conflict that prevented us from seeing the Whistler paintings in the Reading Room. It is all very interesting and worth the investment of an hour.
I also arrived early and enjoyed lunch at the Map Room Cafe. The food is all “to go” so I took my yummy Cobb salad to the nearby courtyard and enjoyed a wonderful dining experience next to the fountain. There is also a Newsfeed cafe in the new modern addition where you’ll find the Children’s Library on the second level. Or you can pay $40 per person and go all out for high tea at the Courtyard Restaurant.
Copley Square has a lot going on. The John Hancock tower is nearby. The Old South Church is the other side of Boylston Street from the library. Also straddling Boylston at the modern library entrance is the Boston Marathon finish. This is also the site of the Patriots Day bombing. Thankfully the area has fully recovered.
One block away is Newbury Street, the main shopping street of the Back Bay neighborhood. Boston is a small big city and it doesn’t take long to walk to Berklee College of Music and the Boston Museum of Art or on to Boston Public Garden.
If you find yourself in the South End of Boston and you want to mooch around a bead store or yarn shop you can satisfy both urges at 
I walked in and was offered a giant bone from the shop dog. Quickly someone asked if I minded dogs. Of course not. By the time I left there were three dogs between customers and the shop keepers. I love it.
There was a lot to look at and the shop offered a/c on a 90 degree day with 50% humidity. I love it.
We had a fun conversation with another Julie who stepped into the studio at the same time as me about the menacing green crabs–an invader from Europe who roots up the sea grass. Should we celebrate the intrinsic beauty of the green crabs even though they are destroying the ecosystem for lack of predators?
Thousands of people spend the day on the Capitol Mall on July 4th enjoying a concert and waiting for sunset for the fireworks to begin. I celebrated July 4 with my young children about 20 years ago–we ate hot dogs and watched the fireworks from the rooftop of the Department of Interior building.
This year I planned my vacation so I could be in Washington DC when my friend Nyasha from Auckland was going to be in Alexandria at the Virginia Theological Seminary. We enjoyed barbecue with Carole, Gary, Guy, Karly and Holly at Stephanie and Ron’s house on Capitol Hill. Then we walked to the Library of Congress steps to watch the fireworks. It was a very traditional Independence Day celebration except the fireworks were beyond amazing.
I am quickly closing in on my goal of visiting all 50 states. I actually was already quite close when I received my National Geographic mini atlas in the mail. I began marking all of the places I’d been and states I’ve visited and realized that I only have a handful left.
Once you are an adult you must meet a higher standards. Our group debated what this meant. We determined that it “counted” if you left the airport or train station and either did a bit of shopping or eat a meal. The next weekend the group of first time travelers intrepidly took a ferry to Scotland, then a train to Glasgow and did some shopping and ate a meal. Good on them!
This posed a problem. If you go on Trip Advisor and ask what there is to do in New Hampshire it comes up with lots of mountains to climb or ski. It was only after we got the recommendation from a NH native to check out Portsmouth that we could do a more refined search and get some ideas. We left Boston at 11:00 a.m. and needed to stop at The Container Store, and then we hit a lot of traffic. We didn’t get to Portsmouth until after 1:00 p.m. I was feeling peckish and yet we wanted to save room for dinner.
The first time I visited the 
2. Paint at least one wall “zappy blue”. The last paint color that inspired me was Jefferson’s choice of robin’s egg blue in Monticello. This is even more exciting. Gardner created the recipe and sent it to Italy to be mixed. I wonder if my local Sherwin Williams can recreate this.
Also in the neighborhood: Grab breakfast or lunch at Cuppa Coffee, the Aussie coffee shop around the corner on Traveler Street. Be sure to get the egg and cheese pie, or lamb pie, or other meat pies specially made to their recipes. There is also a Blue Bikes bikeshare kiosk on the same corner.
americanjulie.com 