December 27th 2012: My Trek North to the American Textile History Museum, Lowell

My target destination today was the American Textile History Museum in Lowell, but like yesterday, I slowed myself down by travelling through several towns along the way there.

First up, the town of Boylston. It had just snowed heavily yesterday night, so all the buildings were covered in a layer of snow.

St. Mary of the Hills Church

First Congregational Church

Wachusetts Reservoir

West Boylston was next.

Oakdale United Methodist Church

Sterling was the last town I visited before heading to Al Dente in Leominster for lunch.

Sterling Seventh Day Adventist Church

St. Richard of Chichester

The restaurant is located in a mall area, a small Italian restaurant to say the least, although the table decor was pretty cute.

I decided to get the Buffalo Wings

and the Ravioli di Zucca (Butternut squash ravioli served with walnuts and diced tomatoes in four cheese cream sauce) for the groupon I had.

In my opinion, the buffalo wings had much too much sauce, and thus was not crispy enough, while the ravioli was way too cheesy. Not a great meal at all.

After my disappointing lunch, my trek toward Lowell continued, passing through Lunenburg,

Pilgrim Covenant Church

United Parish of Lunenburg

Ayer,

New Hope Community Church

Emmanuel Missionary Baptist Church,

141 Littleton Road

Groton,

Union Congregational Church

Kalliroscope Gallery

Old Building, 11 West Street

First Baptist Church

Westford,

United Methodist Church of Westford

St. Mark's Episcopal Church

and Chelmsford.

First Baptist Church

St. Matthews Memorial Church

St. John the Evangelist Church

I managed to reach the American Textile History Museum an hour before it closed, so I had enough time to check it out. Pictures I took of the exhibits here about the progression of textiles from natural to artificial sources follow.

Definitely a pretty good and educational museum, I recommend it to visitors.

From here, it was time to head to Ristorante Pavarotti in the town of Reading for dinner. When I got to the small but upscale Italian restaurant, it was only 5pm, but the owner almost would not let me in as I had not made a reservation, even though the place was still pretty empty. I managed to convince the owner to let me in, telling him that I came all the way from Shrewsbury to try the food, and that I would be in and out of the place quickly, and he made me sit at the bar.

Another blow was when the owner insisted that he would not honour my Groupon as I had not come with someone else, although there is no clause in the coupon which said that I had to bring someone else. I intend to get a full refund for my groupon for this.

Anyway, as I had already spent so much effort getting here, I decided to go ahead and order what I had originally intended, namely the Baby Octopus appetizer, sautéed with capers, calamata olives in a marinara sauce,

and the Seafood Ravioli, filled with shrimp, crab meat, and scallops and served with shrimp and asparagus in a garlic cream sauce. 

For dessert, I decided to try their Cannoli, which was delicious due to the freshness of the ricotta cheese used.

With that, I hurriedly paid for my cheque and left as the restaurant was getting occupied really quickly, and I did not want to raise the ire of the owner any further. I'm just glad he even let me eat there in the first place.