Copping a squat on the Greenway
St Anthony’s Feast is an annual event in the Italian North End of Boston. We like to attend, primarily for the food but also it is a darn good excuse to get into the city on one of the last summer weekends – it is always scheduled for the last weekend before Labor Day. This year we went on Friday, to avoid the weekend crowds. The weather cooperated by being clear, warm and not too humid.
We parked the car at the Alewife T station and took the subway in. For years this was my regular commute, so it was very comfortable for me. Jett, on the other hand, hated it. I believe her comment was “I can’t believe that you could stand this.”
We took the Red Line to Downtown Crossing and changed to the Orange Line for 2 stops to Haymarket. Being Friday, the open-air fruit and vegetable market was operating. We bought a few things on our return trip – cheap asparagus ($1) and some nectarines. There is a reason that the produce is so cheap: it is all nearing the “sell by” date. We ended up discarding the asparagus. The nectarines were eaten, but they, too, were past their prime.
The North End is separated from downtown Boston by the Rose Kennedy Greenway, a very nice strip of parkland built over the underground expressway the resulted from the Big Dig. This is not only a fine place to have a picnic, but also affords some nice views of downtown Boston.
Downtown from the Greenway
From our table at Massamino’s
The foodstuff that we most crave when we go to St Anthony’s is fried artichoke hearts. We just love a good, freshly fried artichoke heart. This year we could not find any for sale at the street vendors, so we decided to have a light lunch at Massamino’s restaurant. We ordered the fried artichokes as an appetizer (excellent!) and split a chicken piccata entrée (the best I have ever had). We dined al fresco and watched the fair traffic as we dined. It was a very nice lunch.
Jett still tires easily and we had to stop frequently to rest. That was just fine with me as my sciatica was making walking painful. Just a couple of old people dottering their way through the Feast.
I was happy to see, when we got back to our car, that no chunks of concrete had fallen on it. The Alewife Garage is now closed evenings and weekends for emergency repairs as the concrete is deteriorating badly and chunks have, in fact, fallen on cars. No one has been injured, though. Yet.
All-in-all it was a fine day trip – one of the too few that we have made this summer.