This week was 100% about my friend Emmie’s birthday! To celebrate, we had insanely overpriced popsicle cocktails at Loopy Doopy, ate our weight in junk food while binging Parks & Rec, and saw our city from a new perspective on a sunset cruise. What a week!
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Well friends, this is my final post about my Boston trip (about time, right?) It’s also the one I’ve been looking forward to the most!
When I told my parents I was going to Boston, my mom immediately started singing the praises of the Boston Common – America’s first public park, opened in 1634.
Sure enough, I ended up there for at least some portion of time every single day I was in the city. It serves as the starting point for the Freedom Trail, is filled with open spaces perfect for lying out with a book, and of course is ideal for people-watching.
Adjacent to the Common is the Boston Public Garden. A lost of people think it’s one giant park, but they are distinct entities – which led to some confusion myself! I was searching the Common for the swan boats my mom had told me she rode in as a little girl, only to discover that they are in fact at the Public Garden, across the street.
Living in New York has made me somewhat of a park snob – when your summer weekends are spent at Central Park or Prospect Park, how can anything else compare? But I can safely say that these Boston parks DO compare, and are the perfect (free!) spot to relax when visiting the city.
One thing I really wanted to do when I was in Boston was go on a brewery tour. I love beer, I love tasting local beers, and every brewery tour I’ve been on has been a blast. Lucky for me, Samuel Adams – which makes some of my favorite brews – is based in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston and offers FREE (!!) tours!
I popped in around 11 a.m. on a Friday and there happened to be a tour starting ten minutes from then, so I jumped right on it! They don’t take reservations so I felt really lucky to have the timing work out so well. I had so much fun learning about the brewing process and (especially) getting to sample their different trademark beers. Also, our tour guide was hilarious!
The waiting area was like a mini museum – so much fun to look around and start picking up fun facts before the tour even started.
My “ticket” to get on the tour.
Little glimpses of the brewhouse and barrel room. Fun fact: This brewery in Boston is for testing and research purposes. The bulk of their brewing is done in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania.
At the end of the tour, we got these tiny beer glasses to keep as souvenirs. Not bad for a tour that only cost a suggested $2 charity donation!
Overall, I highly recommend doing the Samuel Adams brewery tour if you’re ever in Boston with some time to kill. If you do, it’s at 30 Germania Street off the orange line on the T. It’s a bit of a trek, but well worth it!
Have you ever been on a brewery tour or considered one on your travels?
By popular demand (aka my friend Kathleen of Los Angeles requested it), I’m giving you guys a little glimpse into my day-to-day life in New York City! On Friday I filmed some moments and below the video, I’ve got a little write-up with some more detail. I honestly don’t feel like daily life is much different here than anywhere else, but looking through a lens (literally and figuratively!) definitely made me notice the more special things.
A Day In The Life from Leigh Anne Zinsmeister on Vimeo.
5:45 a.m.: Wake up with the sun. Spend some time in the Word (you’ll notice my one-year bible is turning into more of a one-and-a-half year bible, but I’m actually very OK with that. I’d rather take my time and soak it all in than rush through it.) Get ready. Eat a little breakfast. Out the door by 7:15!
7:45 a.m.: Take the scenic route and walk through Washington Square, as I often do. When the weather’s not as nice, I make a transfer or two to end up closer to my office.
8 a.m.-12 p.m.: Work work work. I make my lunches at home and eat at my desk so I can take advantage of the full hour I get for a break.
12 p.m.-1 p.m.: Lunch break! Reading in Washington Square (it is my favorite park, after all.)
1 p.m.-5 p.m.: Work work work.
5 p.m.: I’m a “leave the office right at 5” kind of girl, but most New Yorkers don’t have that luxury, so I spend a lot of evenings killing time on my own before evening plans. On Friday this entails more reading, this time in Union Square.
7:30 p.m.: Dinner with my lovely friend Katie! We have some church things to discuss and decided that was best done over guac (as most things in life are). We go to Tortaria – my first time there and I have nothing but high praise! I also have a pulled-pork torta.
8:30 p.m.: Take the scenic route back to the train – the same station where the day began.
9:15 p.m.: Back in my Brooklyn apartment! It’s a quiet and early night – I’m asleep by 10:30.
I hope you all enjoyed this little glimpse into my life! Feel free to let me know if you ever have any requests for what you’d like to see on here!
You guys! My sister came to visit! And as you might expect, we had the most glorious week ever. It wasn’t her first trip to NYC – just her first since I moved here – so we were able to skip some of the touristy stuff, spend the majority of the week in Brooklyn, and just generally have an amazing time.
Here’s a little review – and my first-ever video!
We greeted her, of course, with a proper NYC summer picnic in Prospect Park, and unintentionally ended up looking like a Trader Joe’s ad.
Naturally, we soaked in as many free views of the city as possible. We started out Sunday at the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, and ended up on the 6th floor of Burlington Coat Factory in Union Square. The sky was that blue pretty much all week.
If ‘views’ was one theme of this trip, ‘food’ was another, equally important one. Ally has been dying to go to Big Gay Ice Cream since I first Instagram’ed it months ago, and I was happy to oblige!
Oh yes, more views. On Wednesday – Ally’s nineteenth birthday – we saw Lion King on Broadway (thanks Mom and Dad!) and then I bought us tickets to the Top of the Rock. I’d been once before, seven years ago, and have been dying to go up again ever since. It was Ally’s first venture up and she loved it so much we stayed two and a half hours to catch this glorious sunset!
Finally, here’s a little video I made of our adventures!
#AllyBrookeInBrooklyn from Leigh Anne Zinsmeister on Vimeo.
Thanks for visiting, Ally!
A Life of Genuine Delight 