The drive down to Boston was relatively easy, with the expected ripoff toll-road Interstate Highways that we’ve come to love in the northeast. Driving into Boston proper was not Rachel’s definition of “fun”, but she was a real trooper and we made it to our friend Rahul’s without incident!

For the long weekend in Boston (Cambridge really), we already had planned quite a few activities centered around the excellent food & drinks in the area, but we also heard that there were a few low-key live shows Rahul was going to drum in – cool! Our first show of the weekend was at a ‘small and intimate’ house party close to Harvard – double cool! Unfortunately once we arrived at this small shindig, we realize we may not have been the right audience… We were greeted by around 100 twenty year olds and the loud & raucous house party we used to attend more than a decade ago. Our first indication that we were no longer in the right place for the night is when I told Rachel “I really wish I had some earplugs right now” – triple cool!

Joking aside, it was a fun housewarming party and it was great to see our friend in action as the star of the show (albeit in the far back behind the singer)! We also enjoyed an open air drum show as shown in the titular picture of this post, and my inner old man didn’t show up quite as quickly since I could just stand farther away from the loud noise…

Boston overall was a fantastic foodie experience outside of the drumming! The list below won’t do it full justice, but some of the highlights we remember fondly are:

• Bug-inspired Cocktails at Backbar (wouldn’t recommend the cricket-themed ones)
• Matcha lattes (+coffee for me) at Maruichi Select and Gypsy Place
• The BEST Brazilian food ever at Muqueca – seriously cannot recommend this more for any lovers of Brazilian meats & definitely go for the feijoada!
• Decent food, but excellent games at Knight Moves board game bar
• and many more!

After a fantastic weekend exploring Boston and much of it’s food scene, we headed down to New York where we were staying with some friends just outside of NYC. On the way, we were delighted to stop and meet Nancy, a longtime family friend of Rachel’s, while exploring Hudson Valley Brewing and enjoy some good catchup time over some sour beers! Later we headed toward NYC, but while we didn’t go into the city (I wasn’t exactly looking forward to driving the van through that particular maze…), we did make it over to Jersey City where we briefly saw longtime friends Tapan and Erin, with their baby boy! This new family theme was quite on brand for the entire next week, as we stayed with Greg and Srishti and THEIR baby boy! There’s not too much exploration to detail here since we settled down to do some light “work” (or as close to it as you can expect from 2 mostly unemployed vanlife bums), but we were very happy to see that our peeping days were not yet done and there were many more leaves to peep in suburban NJ.

For our final stop in the blitz tour of the northeast, we made our way to Washington D.C. for a night where we met with college friend Alex for a wonderful dinner and night out! We also walked around the capitol for a quick reminder of all the tourist hot-spots that we visited as kids, but I wouldn’t say there’s much to cover here – other than the unfortunate near miss of the interesting art that just made it’s appearance right after we left DC…

Overall the last 2 weeks have been incredibly exciting, tiring and filled with driving, but we are so lucky to have such great friends and this opportunity to see them, that we still felt more energized than drained! Soon we’ll be in Shenandoah to cap out the last National Park of the trip before we start the parental leg of the trip.

P.S. – I have an excellent picture of Rachel being a bum in Cambridge as we were going to try some fancy cocktails, and it’s too good not to share – enjoy stoop drinking Rachel!