In 2008, I quit my corporate job, sold off everything I owned and moved overseas with my husband Drew. Since then we've traveled around the world, started our careers over as creative types and nurtured our love of sleeping in late. Oh and we had a baby. Cole, our almost 2 year old has been traveling since he was four months old and probably knows more Thai than me (not that he brags).
Saying Goodbye to a City
It’s raining and cold today in Boston, and perhaps it’s weather-induced melancholy, but today, I started to realize that this may be the last time I ever live in this city. If you haven’t lived in Boston, then you might not realize the love/hate relationship its residents have with this college packed metropolis. The winters are harsh, bitter and refuse to end. Housing prices are out of control ($400K for a studio apartment, yikes) and if that’s not bad enough, we pay some of the highest taxes in the country. Yet as soon as we’re ready to pack it all in and move to Florida, spring arrives. At first it’s just a couple of warm days, and everyone tentatively heads outside, to catch some sun on their face—not too enthusiastically, we’ve been tricked before. Then it’s back to cold again, maybe a snowstorm in March thrown in for good measure. But slowly the warm days start outnumbering the cold, and everyone starts stripping off winter layers in favor of those long neglected summer clothes. The spring and summer in Boston are irresistible. I love wandering the city long into the afternoon, catching a meal at an outdoor café, riding my bike through the parks, or listening to live music that fills the city in the summer.
Since I won’t be here to enjoy my hard earned Boston summer (hard earned because I did suffer the Boston winter), I thought I should find a way to enjoy the city before I leave. Here’s my personal list of some simple things I’d like to do before I go:
- Take the ferry to Provincetown or Martha’s Vineyard and spend a day riding my bike through the sandy trails.
- Catch at least one of the outdoor music concerts that are held on the sprawling lawn outside the Hatch Shell, complete with a sumptuous picnic with my husband and the dogs.
- Go out for drinks with friends, somewhere fabulously expensive, that has outdoor seating, and only order appetizers.
- Eat lunch in the open garden inside of the Boston Public Library, while curled up with a book.
If you knew you were leaving your town or city indefinitely, what are some of the things you’d like to do before you left?