Today, I had a Cupcake Crawl to do with the
Boston Chocolate Tours company as part of a Livingsocial deal, but as I had a
Boston Food Swap event to go to later that afternoon in South Boston, I decided to park there and walk to
Cafe Vanille near the
Boston Common. I used this walk as a journey to take pictures of the many skyscrapers in Boston. Pictures of the places I passed by follow.
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| Art on a Tightrope |
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| Views from South Boston |
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| Congress Street Bridge |
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Hood Milk Bottle
outside Boston Children's Museum |
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| Seaport Boulevard Bridge |
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| Atlantic Wharf Docks |
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| Mascot atop Boston Children's Museum |
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| Intercontinental Boston front |
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| Walking Flower Times the Power of Five |
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| Pumpkin Series |
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| Macy's, 450 Washington Street |
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Robert Burns Statue,
1 Winthrop Square |
With that, I reached the Boston Common. I still had a little time, so I decided to headed to the nearby
Thinking Cup to grab a bite. This is a typical coffee place, and I bought a Blondie to munch on the way to Cafe Vanille.
Cafe Vanille itself is located within the old
Charles Street Meeting House. I decided to walk around a little when I got here, taking pictures of the interesting buildings around me.
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| Old Charles Street Meeting House |
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Arthur Fiedler Footbridge,
Storrow Drive and Embankment Road |
When I was done, I got a Hot Chocolate at Cafe Vanille, and when it was time for the Cupcake Crawl to start, I headed outside to meet everyone else participating in the tour. I was handed a bag with a container for 6 mini cupcakes and a bag of pretzels which is meant to cleanse the palate between cupcakes and with that, the tour started. The first cupcake was from Lulu's Sweet Shoppe, which is in the North End, so the tour guide bought the chocolate salted caramel cupcakes for us instead of us walking there.
The salt in the cupcake, as well as its mini size, is a new thing for me, being used to sweet cupcakes and all. It was okay I guess, but not my thing.
The next cupcake was from Cafe Vanille itself, which is not strictly a cupcake place, but the guide got for us half a portion of strawberry coated cupcakes. Pictures of the cakes in the shop and the cake we had, which was pretty good for half a cupcake.
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| Cakes at Cafe Vanille |
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| Strawberry coated cupcake |
From here, we walked to our next destination
Finale Park Plaza, passing through the
Public Garden, where the famous swan couple were actually out swimming in the pond today. Another interesting fact our guide told us was that the duckling statues at the northeast corner of the place are dressed up accordingly during special occasions like Independence Day or the Boston Bruins playoffs.
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| Swans in the pond |
The Emancipation Memorial was also outside the
Park Plaza Hotel, where the desserterie is located.
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Emancipation Statue,
Park Plaza and Columbus Avenue |
The store itself was pretty much like the one in Cambridge, although I felt that the Cambridge one was more cozy. Here, we got a chocolate cupcake heaped with a peanut butter ganache, which isn't even on the menu. It was pretty awesome, but really filling as well. How I made it through the rest of the cupcakes, I do not know.
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| Peanut butter cupcake |
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| Desserterie Decor |
Next, we headed to Newbury Street, where there are actually a string of cupcake shops here.
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Old New England Museum of Natural History,
234 Berkeley Street |
Our next destination was
Georgetown Cupcake, where the cupcakes are stacked on trays all around the shop.
Here, our guide got us 2 strawberry cupcakes, which were absolutely the best cupcakes I have had to date.
Our next place was
Sweet Cupcakes, passing by Niketown on 200 Newbury Street along the way.
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| Niketown |
The layout of cupcakes here at Sweet Cupcakes was a little more traditional, although there was an interesting Ferris Wheel of real cupcakes as well.
We got the chocolate mini cupcake here, although by now I could hardly stomach down any more cake, so I only ate the topping.
Our next destination was
Johnny Cupcakes, which is actually a clothing store, although it is designed like a cupcake store. Apparently on one April Fool's Day, the store actually bought cupcakes and dressed the store up as an actual cupcake store, confusing customers who came into the store. Here, we got cupcakes from
Jannabee's, located in Medford. Once again, it was salty, so I only had a few bites of it.
Our final cupcake was from
Cold Stone Creamery located at the
Prudential Center. This cupcake is actually an ice cream one, complete with a chocolate coated base, so we could eat all of it. Unfortunately, my camera had run out of battery, so I could only take poor quality pictures of it with my Blackberry.
We had it in the courtyard of the
First Church of Christ, Scientist, where kids were busy playing at the fountain. The cupcake was good, but as I said, the Georgetown Cupcake was the best one of all today.
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| Fountain at The First Church of Christ, Scientist |
The tour finally over, I walked back to South Boston to my car to charge my camera while waiting for the food swap event to start.
After charging my camera adequately, I decided to head into
Papagayo Mexican Kitchen and Tequila Bar, which was right next to where we were to have our event, for a drink. This place is pretty decent I should say, with a nice bar area as well.
Not wanting anything alcoholic, I decided to get the Mandarin Mexican Soda, which was just okay I guess.
Soon after, my friend arrived, so we headed into the office building right next door. However, as we failed to read the notice to contact the person in charge of the event in order to let us in to the right area for the event, we spent some time actually trying to look for the place ourselves, finding a lot of locked doors which required keycard access. Finally after calling the contact person, we were let in. The event itself was pretty informal, with everyone laying out their food that they had made for everyone else to see, with samples available for trying as well. After going around and trying the food, it was time for the bidding for the food that you wanted, with you making an offer of certain quantities of what you had for the food you wanted. After the bidding, the food swapping began, where people decided whether to give their food to others who had offered their food in exchange. I made caramel cereal treats, the simplest thing I could make in the shortest amount of time, hence there were no offers for my stuff, although my friend who had asked me to come for this event did give me a bid out of pure sympathy.
In the end, I still managed to get some food, including the one I really wanted, a jar of curried pickles, which went really well with baguette slices.
Overall, my friend and I did not really enjoy ourselves here however, being unable to relate to everyone else who were there. Oh well, at least I got my pickles.
After leaving, I asked my friend to join me in checking out what Bastille Day in Cambridge was all about. It was advertised to be happening along Holyoke Street, but when we went there, it turned out that there were only a few tents on the entire short stretch of road selling food, and some of it wasn't even French. My friend and I were so disappointed at how this turned out.
From here, we headed to the nearby
BerryLine store on 3 Arrow Street, passing by the Harvard Lampoon Building along the way
Being a simple guy, I decided to try a micro Original yogurt without any toppings, and I have to say it was really delicious.
From here, we decided it was time for dinner, so we headed to
Addis Red Sea nearby for some Ethiopian cuisine. I really liked the relaxing atmosphere here, designed African style. We decided to get the Ayip Begomen, made of cottage cheese mixed with mitamita and gomen, which was actually really good. Unlike
the Ethiopian food I had in Malden, the injera bread here wasn't sour at all so I kept eating it all the time.
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| Ayip Begomen |
For our main dishes, I got the Dulet, made of lamb tripe, chopped meat and liver, mixed with herbal butter, chili powder, green pepper, onion and ginger, while my friend got the Yesega Alcha, made of tender beef cubes simmered in a sauce of butter, onion, ginger and tumeric.
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| Dulet (left) and Yesega Alcha (right) |
The Dulet was really delicious, although the Yesega Alcha was a little bland. Overall, I'm glad we decided to come here for dinner after a long day of disappointing events.
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