October 5th 2014: A Day of Eating in Boston

Early this morning, I headed to the town of Lynnfield to do some hiking there. I had no trail maps, so I had to wing it and hope I could find the views the two places purportedly had. My first hike was at the Partridge Island/Reedy Meadow area, accessed at the junction of Main Street and Heritage Lane. The path I took was pretty straightforward, shown below in pink.

The boardwalk brought me through the swamp,

onto the island and on to another boardwalk, which led to a viewing platform that had a commanding view of the wetlands.

After retracing my steps and returning to my car, I headed to my next hike at the Bow Ridge Reservation at the end of Ledge Road. The rough path I took here with the help of Google Maps with the terrain feature is shown below in pink.

To get to the ridge, I had to pass by the power lines,

and when I reached the ledges, I thought I had already reached my destination, but with only partial views of the Boston skyline.

I had a feeling there had to be a much better view eastwards, so I pushed on, and I was finally rewarded after emerging onto a large plateau area.

The fall foliage was beautiful as well.

In my attempt to get back to my car, I got lost, emerging elsewhere on to the road and having to walk on Canterbury Road and Salem Street to get back to my car.

From here, it was on to Boston, where I had food truck stuff to do. Before that, I decided to use my deal at Metropolitan Desserts, not knowing that it provides desserts to Angora Cafe, which I have been to before in the past, and this was where I was directed to by my deal.

I decided to go with a box of Baklava,

and the Turtle Cheesecake

Not too bad, but I was disappointed that Metropolitan Desserts wasn't a new place on its own.

As I hadn't had breakfast yet, I decided to head nearby to Cookin' Cafe and Grille, a pretty small place with a pretty uninteresting menu as well. The Pepperoni and Cheese Omelet did fill my stomach though, and there's not much you can go wrong with it.

After a day of doing food truck stuff, my friends and I headed out to celebrate at Jo Jo Taipei in the Allston area of town.

Besides the Pig Ears

and the Jo Jo Special Soup Dumplings,

we also got the Tofu with Preserved Duck Egg,

the Bamboo Shoots with Dried Beancurd,

the Spiced Beef,

the Crispy Smelly Beancurd,

the Salted Crispy Chicken

and the Crabmeat Soup Dumplings.

Except for the beancurd which was a little too strong and smelly for my liking, and the chicken which had a lot of bones, everything else was pretty tasty, although they could have sliced the beef a little thinner as well.

After dinner, we headed nearby to Infusions Tea Spa at 110 Brighton Avenue, where almost everyone got a hot tea, with me getting the Russian Caravan Tea (blend of fine black teas from China yielding soft, slightly smoky and sweet brew, bold ans savory flavor),

which was pretty good with honey as well.

With that, a day of eating out in Boston was over. My mom willing be coming over tomorrow, looking forward to that.