Boldly Go Solo

Boston is ka-razy lively on weekend nights. I almost missed it. After a long day of conference sessions,  I thought about staying in for the evening.

But it was still shy of 6 pm and that would have been way too long an evening in a sterile hotel room. I briefly considered going to the hotel gym but nixed that in a flash. On a Saturday night? In a great city? Huh-uh.

Instead, I choose a brisk hike to the North End, Boston’s little Italy, to pick up one of my favorite desserts: torrone. From Modern Pastry on Hanover Street. Pronounced "maw-din" in "Bostonese."

If you’ve never had torrone, it’s like French nougat. If you’ve never had French nougat, it’s sweet, white, chewy stuff packed with nuts, most often almonds. And it’s goooooood.

The goal combined exercise with reward. It also was a goal that broke my tether to "safety." The tether to the comfort of a hotel room, and the lazy choice of staying still. Off I went.

First through a warren of a mall that runs a quarter of a mile or more, from Copley Square to the Hynes Convention Center. I spotted a Legal Seafood restaurant and figured it was a dinner option once my mission was accomplished.

I broke free of the shops via a revolving door, which spun me out onto Boylston Street. Soon I was past the Boston Public Library and upon Boston Common, one of the oldest public parks in the U.S. Then past the gold-domed State House and City Hall.

I bounded past
these notable sights with just a glance, familiar with them from
other visits, and from my time as a student in Waltham, Massachusetts.
And then on to Faneuil Hall. 

Then I got to Haymarket, the outdoor market that comes alive on Saturdays. That really
stoked memories from my college days when the market and Faneuil Hall were the tourist sights we took the train in to see.

I arrived at the tail end of the day’s sales. I could smell hours-old fish
mongers’ boxes; see stacks of crates with stray lettuce leaves and the
remains of other squashed produce. People waited in lines at the few stalls still open, walking off with plastic grocery bags of fruit and vegetables.

I kept moving, finally reaching Modern
Pastry. The line was about 30 people long, half in the small shop, half
outside. People lined patiently against the wall. I’m telling you, the place has a reputation…

They were all waiting for freshly filled cannolis, cookies by the pound, truffles, torrone, pizzelle, colorful sugar-coated almonds or sheep. I don’t know what was inside these sheep that were lined up in the window by the dozens. All I could see was the white "woolly" icing.

I didn’t care how long the wait would be. I didn’t walk 40 minutes across town for nothing. This is very
special torrone. There have been times I’ve considered having it FedEx’d. Which Modern Pastry will do for customers.

Extremely pleased with my $33 worth of prized sweets, I entered Express, an "Italian cafeteria," across the street. After my whirl about town, I all of a sudden felt deflated. And ticked off at myself.

There I was with nothing to read, nothing to
do and no one to talk to, while I waited for my order. That’s a cardinal sin for a solo traveler. But because I knew I it was a long walk from the hotel to the North End, I had put money in my pocket and left everything else in my room.

Grrr. So annoying.

I waited, antsy, while a spinach cheese calzone heated. I began to mellow and let my thoughts entertain me. I watched as a guy in a white apron took my dinner
out of the oven with a pizza paddle, and…holy cow!

The calzone was
the size of a football, if not the entire football field. About two
pounds of mozzarella cheese oozed from inside. I couldn’t stay silent.

I said to a
couple a table away, "Do you want some of this? No way I can eat all of
it." They laughed. And then got concerned about how big their orders were going to be. 

I wrestled with the crunchy, cheesy, delicious monster,
dipping bites into tomato sauce. When I finally put down my knife and fork, the
woman from the next table asked, "How’d you do?"

I told her I
couldn’t eat another bite and couldn’t take it home because I was in a
hotel and yadda, yadda, yadda. It doesn’t take too much to
get people to talk to you at a restaurant. You just need a logical way to break the wall everyone puts up at their individual tables when dining in a room full of strangers. Ask a question. Make a comment.

I got up and said good-night and walked
back past the bars, which were getting more crowded and crazy. (Why was
I hearing "American Pie" spill out of one Irish bar instead of, say,
the Unicorn song?)

Then, I skipped the trek back, and hopped onto the creaky, green-line "T" at the
Government Center station. Some college kids were
belting out a Sesame Street song, amusing bystanders. It was way more entertaining for me to be in the thick of things than, say, watching CNN headline news in my room.

All told, I was out for only about
two and a half hours. A short, but exhilarating adventure. At the
hotel, I squeezed into the elevator with a hotel employee who was bringing someone dinner on a room-service table.

I thought to myself, "Hm, that person really should get out."

Photo: Ellen Perlman. Modern Pastry box with plain and chocolate-covered torrone.