As you well know by now, Mister and I recently returned from our trip to New England, specifically the area north of Boston near the New Hampshire border, and into New Hampshire a bit.  The primary purpose of the trip was our honeymoon and to introduce Mister to my family members who did not come out to Vegas for our wedding (and I know better than to make them come when it’s well over 105°F outside).

After a lovely flight in which we got little, if any, sleep due to a whining child in the row behind us, we obtained our rental car at a much higher price than our online reservation said.  At 6:30am and as tired as we were, we didn’t push the issue, but after thinking it over, Mister was able to secure a car with another company at a much, much lower price, so it was worth it to us to get up at 4am the next day to go into Boston, return the first rental, pick up the second car, and be on our way.

So back to day 1.  It was too early to check into our hotel, so Mister tried his hand at driving in the Bay State.  It might have been a bit easier if he had an informative and educational book such as this one, but eventually he got the hang of rotaries and the overabundance of yield signs.  We drove to Gloucester, took some pictures of statues, then drove around Rockport and headed back towards Danvers for a roast beef sandwich.  Mister didn’t understand why I was craving one of these so badly, and he insisted that I was describing Arby’s.  Not so.  For those familiar with a Massachusetts-style roast beef sandwich, you know of what goodness I speak.  For those not familiar, let me enlighten you.  First, you take a bulkie roll (I prefer onion rolls), split it, butter the inside, and put it on the grill (flat grill, not a bbq type grill).  This gives the inside of your sandwich a nice, flavorful crunch.  Then you take warm, rare roast beef and slice it just a bit thinner than your deli slicer will handle.  Pile it high on the roll!  Add mayo or bbq sauce, and cheese if you desire.  That’s it.  Mister was impressed that the sandwich contained real roast beef and not that loaf stuff that’s used at a previously mentioned fast food chain, and by the end of the trip he was a convert.

After lunch, we decided to check in at the hotel because we needed some shuteye.  We only planned on sleeping for about an hour to make ourselves ready for the rest of the day without dooming ourselves to a night owl schedule in a part of the country that doesn’t have much nightlife to speak of, but that plan went horribly wrong.  I slept for around 4 hours.  Officer Friend called sometime during that nap, but I wasn’t coherent enough to talk to him and went back to sleep.  Mister finally woke me up in time to find some dinner, and we ended up going to downtown Newburyport to a landmark restaurant called The Grog, and took in the first of our fresh, New England seafood dinners.  Yummy!  I grew up on fresh seafood, and miss it so much.  A word to the wise: don’t even try to eat seafood in a landlocked state.  Just don’t.

After dinner we walked around Newburyport for a couple minutes, window shopping our way back to the car, and then headed back to the hotel.  We stayed up and watched tv for way too late since we were no longer tired, even though we had a 4am wake up call to go swap cars.  But we managed.  The next day, we swapped cars and since it was still way too early, I amazed Mister with my amazing Dunkin Donuts radar and then we went to Salisbury Beach to watch the sun rise over the Atlantic – a first for Mister.  A drive around the seacoast showed Mister the neighborhood I lived in right before moving to Vegas.  Then we drove to Salem, MA.  Mister was really eager to see Salem, so we made it our sightseeing priority.

Salem, MA in October is not a quiet place, as you can imagine.  Can you really expect it in a town where the police have a witch on a broomstick silhouetted on their cars?  No, it was a bit crowded, but being there on a weekday as opposed to the weekend helped give us a bit of breathing room.  We started with the Corwin Witch House, which is a wicked old house that belonged to a judge involved in the witch trials.  Then we walked down Essex Street to go towards the Witch Museum, stopping in some shops along the way.  When we got to the Witch Museum, we started walking towards the entrance when two busloads filled with elderly tourists stopped, emptied out and rushed the entrance.  Suddenly there was a line down the street, and since it was now after lunch and we were tired, we decided to plan our next trip to New England in the off season, and put the rest of the Salem attractions on that trip’s list.  We headed back to the car, taking a detour to a wicked old cemetery, and decided to drive to one more old thing: House of the Seven Gables.  Mister’s interested in history, and old houses feed into that interest, so it was a fun tour.

By that time it was getting late, and we had plans to have dinner with my dad and stepmom, so we headed up there.  I did a quick driving tour through my hometown, which Mister enjoyed because Methuen has a lot of cool history. We stopped at the local cemetery to visit my grandfather, then went to my dad’s house.  I think Mister enjoyed seeing the house I grew up in.  We chatted with my dad and stepmom until it was time to go pick up my nephew, Bubba, from his football game.  We all piled into the truck to head to the high school I attended in 9th and 10th grade and encountered a crowd of parents picking up all their kids from various sporting events.  With no cell signal, there was no way to get in touch with Bubba to tell him where exactly we were, so since I knew the school grounds I walked up the bus loop and quickly found Bubba waiting on the sidewalk.  I stood next to him for a few minutes before asking him if he was waiting for a ride.  He said yes.  I told him I knew where Papa was, then he finally realized his most favoritest Aunty in all the world was standing beside him.  “Oh, hi Aunty.”

At Bubba’s suggestion, Dad took us to a seafood joint near his house.  It’s mostly fried seafood, and trust me, we Bay Staters can fry seafood really good, but I had something else.  The Holy Grail of seafood.  Maine Lobster.  Yep, it was on the menu and I was having it.  But not just any Maine Lobster.  Twin Maine Lobster – that’s two whole lobsters.  For $19.99.  Oh yes, I was bibbed, my sleeves got rolled up, and I was in the zone.  So messy to eat and so worth every last morsel.

Saturday was the day of our par-tay, the one we planned so that we could get everyone together in one place and meet and greet and celebrate.  We started out in mid-morning by heading to my dad’s place of business.  Mister’s parents have a truck yard, my dad has The Garage.  Mister has heard so many stories that occur there, so I wanted to show him.  He liked it – he said it was a really nice little office, and a great yard.  There’s a brook out back and trees, so even though it’s on the main road through town, it feels rural and relaxing.  After visiting dad, we headed to a different Salem, this one in New Hampshire, to get lunch and do a tour since I spent way more time in Salem, NH than Salem, MA growing up.  We stopped at Newbury Comics for a wicked good time, then wound our way through town.  I showed Mister the house I lived in until I was 6, which is when Dad bought the house in Methuen.  We went to the church to see the memorial garden and visit my mom’s parents.  Grandma’s name was just carved on the headstone that week, so I’m glad I got to see that.  We continued to wind our way through Derry and Londonderry before arriving at the restaurant for our party.

The party was pretty good.  Kids got kinda loud, as kids do, but it was really nice to see everyone.  Dinner was great, and everyone got along, so it was a very nice night.  Except the part about my brother, which my mom wrote about.  But it was fine in the end.  Mister enjoyed meeting the rest of the family and some of my friends, and was finally able to put faces with the names.

The next day, Sunday, we planned on doing Boston.  But my not so great plans, which didn’t consider situations like Mister’s bad back preventing him from walking, meant we got into Boston, parked, got up to the Common, and walked back to the car.  We tried to drive to the USS Constitution, but Boston’s well-laid out roads had other plans and tried to shove us to the airport.  So we decided instead to go back to Newburyport, which is much more compact and more easily walked.  The Autumn Harvest Festival caused us to abort those plans, since heavy traffic meant that we would most surely not get a parking space anywhere near the downtown area.  We were starving by this point, so headed to Friendly’s for lunch and called my mom to announce that we were coming over.  Mommy was thrilled at the unexpected visit, and Mister got to see a bit more of New Hampshire since we had to drive nearly forever on a road to the middle of nowhere to get to my mom’s house.

For Monday, our last full day there, Mister suggested we call my Gram to visit with her.  I really liked this idea because I really like spending time with my Gram.  First we picked up Bubba and went bowling so that I could show Mister a form of bowling that is more challenging because the ball is not as wide as the lane.  We had lunch at the bowling alley then headed to Gram’s.  Mister enjoyed talking to Gram and learning of how she earned her engineering degree in the 1940s and worked as an electrical engineer for a time.  Then we popped downstairs to visit my aunt and uncle for a bit, and I got to show Mister the house I spent every single Christmas in until I moved to Nevada.  Then we dropped Bubba off and headed back to the hotel.

On our last day, we had an evening flight, so we checked out of our hotel and did a driving tour.  Mister wanted to see more of New Hampshire and fall colors, so we did that before heading to the airport.  Overall, Mister really liked his first visit to Massachusetts and New Hampshire.  He loves the fact that there are 4 distinct seasons and would love to experience Christmas with snow.  He loves the old houses and the fact that newer homes are built in pretty much the same styles that were used since the Pilgrims first landed.  He loves the accent, even though he thought I was speaking a totally different language most of the time.  Most of all, I think he loves that I grew up there and was able to show him a part of the country he’d never been to before – a part of the country that is a huge part of who I am.