August 5th 2013: Dinner at Shanghai Gardens, Attleborough

Today after work, i decided to use my Groupon at Shanghai Gardens, a Chinese restaurant in Attleborough.

Before that, I decided to sightsee a little until daylight ran out, passing through Shrewsbury,

Flint Pond, 30 Hartford Turnpike

and Grafton.

Fisherville Pond from Riverview Park,

176 Providence Road

In Upton, I first went to hike at Stefan's Farm. The rough path I took here to try to find the water body here is shown below in pink.

The path in the woods was pretty simple, but whenever I entered the fields, the darker green patches on the map, they were pretty overgrown and hard to distinguish. Unfortunately, the water body was well hidden as well, causing me to bypass it and head into the next field. I realized I was lost, but thought I had not yet passed the pond, so I tried to find an alternate way through the woods, which was a really rough path to traverse. It was only when I started turning south that I finally realized where I was and backtracked all the way back, when I finally found the really small pond, hidden behind a bunch a trees so I could not get to it. What a waste of my time here.

After getting back to my car, I visited Pratt Pond at Hopkinton Road and Westboro Street in town,

and then tried to find the Upton Caves, an ancient manmade subterannean structure located at the new Upton Heritage Park at 18 Elm Street. I apparently went the wrong way, finding Mill Pond instead,

and gave up after walking around aimlessly on the paths I managed to find. I later found out my mistake a little too late, but I will be back here again in the near future.

The last town I visited was Milford,

Old P Gillon Building,

189 Main Street

Calzone Park,

Main Street and Beach Street

which has the Irish Round Tower in the middle of St. Mary's Cemetery at ~70 Cedar Street.

Finally, it was time to head into Attleborough. The restaurant itself has pretty interesting decor, with Chinese vases, paintings and lanterns all over the place.

With my groupon, I managed to order a lot of food, mainly appetizers, getting the Hom Sui Gok (fried sticky rolls with pork and vegetables),

the Fried Wontons with Lemongrass,

the Peking Duck Wrap Appetizer,

and finally the Cantonese Style Sweet and Sour Pork.

The two dumpling dishes were actually pretty tasty, although the pork was way too sweet and dry, while the wrap was just so-so. Overall, unless you are really craving Americanized Chinese food, it is not worth the trip.

With that, I called it a day for sightseeing and headed home. I'm definitely going to find those caves some day, and I'll be armed with a torchlight for it.