July 15th 2017: A Day in Sandwich

We started off today with breakfast at Panera Bread in Westborough, getting a Hot Chocolate, which came in a mug,

And the Avocado, Egg White and Spinach Breakfast Sandwich.

Pretty good beverage, not being too sweet, although the bread for the sandwich was a little on the hard side.

With that, we headed into the town of Bourne,

Cape Cod Canal Railroad Bridge

St. Peter's Episcopal Church

Buzzards Bay Water Tower,
End of Wagner Way

Christmas Tree Shops,
5 Cranberry Highway

Getting a bag of Steamers

at East Wind Lobster and Grille, a seafood place in town.

Pretty fresh, and a good supplement to our earlier meal. After finishing all the shellfish, we headed to our destination for the day, the Heritage Museums and Gardens in Sandwich, where flowers were pretty much in bloom wherever we went,

especially the hydrangeas,

which was what we were here for anyway.

This place has a pretty cool waterfall made by flowing water through a gutter sort of pipeline

and flowing for a distance before spilling over into a water lily pond down below.

There are also museums with some cool exhibits,

cars

and a carousel.

Really nice place, though a little on the pricy side for admission.

From here, it was time for lunch at the Pilot House Restaurant and Lounge, a decent upscale place with a casual feel to it in town.

We got the Lobster Claw Cocktail (chilled and served with sweet Dijon dipping sauce),  Katama Oysters (salt bomb with sweet as candy finish)  and Duxbury Oysters (briny with plump meats set in deep cups with sweet, buttery finish),

the Sweet and Sour Conch (lightly fried conch tossed in Javanne's secret sweet and sour sauce, served over Jasmine Rice)

and the Smoked Bluefish Pate (served with grape tomato, red onion scallions, Belgian Endive, Herbed Crustinis).

The raw stuff tasted fresh with the sauces as can be expected, and I never knew endives could serve well as crostini substitutes. The conch was little disappointing though, being a little hard, the sauce not being anything special, for a Chinese guy.

After lunch, we checked out a few more places in town,

Bell, Ed Moffitt Drive and Gallo Road

Coast Guard Station Cape Cod Canal

Cape Cod Canal

 including the Cape Cod Canal Visitors Center,

         

and the Sandcatcher Recreational Area on 1 Freeman Avenue,

before heading over to the Boardwalk,

where kids were jumping off the bridge into the water below.

We decided to settle down for the day on the back side of Town Neck Beach,

where one can see Springhill Beach as well.

Finally, we called it a day, heading back to Boston for some dessert at Coco Leaf, getting the Che Nhan Nhuc (dried longan, aloe vera, honey, winter melon) for real this time, after getting a sample of it the last time we were here.

Still not to my liking though. We also got the Raspberry Passion Fruit Tart, 

which was pretty good, although it was a little too hard to cut with a plastic knife.

Our final destination for the day was Fromage, a somewhat upcale yet casual wine and cheese bar in the South Boston area, 

although we got neither tonight, settling for the Escargot a la Bourguinonne (escargots sautéed with garlic, herb-butter sauce and burgundy wine, served with lightly toasted bread)

and the Osso Bucco Bites (slow-roasted pork shank meat over a polenta cake with parmesan cheese and parsley).

Small portions, but a delight to savour. Might come back to try their cheeses next time.

If you thought that was the end of it, you thought wrong. Our last stop for the day was for ice cream at Broadway Dairy Maid, a pretty popular place we have been wanting to try for a while. We just got a Vanilla Soft Serve,

which was pretty creamy, but nothing really amazing. A good end to a day in Sandwich though.