Trident Booksellers and Café in Boston met all of my expectations and then some. For one thing, I love the ambiance. On one side there’s a bustling counter with a bunch of booths and a long communal table at the back.

On the other, well, there’s this:

A carefully curated selection of books and magazines. So carefully curated, in fact, that the people who choose and sell them have their own bios on Trident’s staff page (one of them contains the word absquatulated – I’m not sure whether that’s a selling point or not).

But back to the food. As I mentioned, it met all my requirements, particularly with regards to portion size. The boys started out their meals with Mango Tango smoothies, containing mango, orange juice, honey, and vanilla ice cream. Finally! We found a place where we can ice cream and bacon at the same meal!

I ordered the Eggs Benedict with avocado. I think I may still have some leftovers tucked away somewhere.

And Matt had the elegantly named Potato Chuckwagon.

I know this looks innocent, but under those fried eggs lies a mass of shredded potato, cheddar cheese, chorizo, onions, and peppers.

The Trident is a busy place, especially on weekends when you may have to wait for a table – although of course there are all those books to browse through while you wait. We lucked out and got to sit down right away on a Saturday morning in July. The service was friendly and efficient but not rushed and our server remembered to bring Tommy the side of whipped cream he asked for to accompany his dainty meal of pancakes, eggs, homefries, toast, and bacon.

(I no longer remember why my child asked for a side of whipped cream or why I permitted him to get a side of whipped cream when he also had a smoothie with ice cream in it. Maybe he hit me over the head with a book and I was unconscious when he ordered.)

Trident Booksellers is located at the far end of Newbury Street from downtown Boston toward Boston University. It was supremely hot the day we ate there, so we chose to hop back on the T for one more stop instead of walking to Fenway Park, which lies just a little further out. On a nicer day, this would be an easy walk. You could also easily stroll back up Newbury Street (although beware – much expensive consumer temptation will line your way) to visit the Boston Public Library, the Swan Boats, or the Common. The Esplanade along the Charles River is close by, as is the Museum of Fine Arts and the meandering Fens, a gorgeous green space to get lost in (if you’re there in early summer, be sure to make your way over to the rose garden). Trident is therefore the perfect place to fill up before setting out to burn off some energy in the Back Bay. Or stop by for dinner (or “perpetual breakfast”) at the end of a busy day – they are open every day from 8 a.m. until midnight. The menu is extensive, with something to please everyone, and they do serve beer and wine if your day happens to have been a bit wearying.

For Wanderfood Wednesday at Wanderlust and Lipstick – stop by for some more lip-smacking posts.

Tommy inherited my father’s name, his long legs, and his passion for baseball, and although the Phillies rule the airways at our house, when we visited Boston a trip to Fenway seemed an appropriate homage. I wanted to get tickets for a game, but balked at the exorbitant price tag: Before buying any food or drink, I would have had to drop a cool $400 for nosebleed seats. How different from my childhood, when anyone could get tickets; I remember long, and to me excruciatingly boring, hours at Fenway – hours wasted on a child with no appreciation for the sport’s poetry or the history of the stadium. Hot hours spent counting empty seats. But now those seats are full. In fact every single game has sold out since 2003.

Since seeing a game wasn’t feasible, I was happy to learn that anyone can tour Fenway. In fact, I’d call this a must-see for any baseball fan with an interest in the game’s history, since the park is the oldest one in the league that’s still in use. It’s also one of the smallest stadiums still in use, making it an accessible and intimate place to learn about the Red Sox and indeed about Boston itself.

Click on photos to see full-sized versions with captions

Tour start at the Team Store on Yawkey Way across from the stadium. The guide quickly susses out what teams visitors root for (in our case it was obvious; Tommy was clad, per usual, in his full Phillies regalia). However, unless you’re a Yankees fan, you’re fairly safe from abuse. But if the Yankees are your favorite team, be prepared for repeated and (relatively) good-nature ribbing throughout the tour.

We started in the wooden Grandstand seats I remembered so well from my own childhood. You’re there for a while because a professional photographer captures each group as they enter; the photos are sold as souvenirs at the end of the tour. Here we started to learn the history of the team and the park, how it was named for the neighborhood in which it was built, how when it opened in 1912 the left- and right-field bleachers weren’t yet complete, how a fire that destroyed those wooden left-field bleachers in 1926 led ultimately to the extension of the Grandstand where we were sitting as well as the concrete wall, how the scoreboard – still changed by hand from behind the wall – was installed in 1934. We learned about this shrine’s Holy Trinity of Ruth, Robinson, and Williams. (Although perhaps a comparison to Judas is more apt when mentioning Babe Ruth.)

Other tour highlights include a visit to the top of that concrete wall, which since 1947 has been painted to match the rest of the stadium and is now famously called the Green Monster. We perched in the seats that in recent years were placed on the top of this most famous cliff in baseball, the bane of so many fielders. Everything in Fenway seems to have a name, a story, a legend, a myth – even the foul poles. The one atop the Green Monster is named for Carlton Fisk, whose 1975 World Series home run forced a seventh game against the Reds (which the Sox famously, painfully, lost).

The Lone Red seat in the right field bleachers is visible from various points in the tour. It marks the spot where in 1946 Ted Williams hit the longest home run ever recorded at Fenway. From the opposite side of the field it seems impossibly far, and one can only imagine how it felt to be the man sitting in that seat, hit on the head with what surely was the most famous ball ever struck, and not even getting to go home with it.

We ended the tour watching the Mariners warm up before that evening’s game. The players pitched and batted and stretched, the air shimmered with heat, the wooden seats sat expectant and empty, the famous Citgo sign overlooked all. Closing my eyes to the satisfying ring of balls connecting with bats I could almost hear the cadence of the announcers, weaving a summer story that my father never tired of.

Our first full day in Boston last summer was a true scorcher – heat over 100 degrees rendering any kind of outdoor activity impossible. Since I had planned to begin our trip with a walk on the Freedom Trail, this necessitated some shifting of plans. I wasn’t sure that the boys would be up to spending an entire day at the Museum of Science, but figured we could start out there, and if necessary, return to our room at the Custom House for some hanging out time.

We started our day in the Modeling the Mesozoic exhibit, which focuses on showing how scientists’ perceptions of dinosaurs change as they gather new evidence, and how this changes the way dinosaurs are modeled and how we understand the relationship between dinosaurs and modern-day animals like birds.

After exploring dinosaurs for a while, we moved closer to home at the Human Body Connection. In addition to visiting with some newly hatched chicks and adorable tamarins, the boys checked out the different systems of the body, rode bikes with a skeleton, and checked out how their heights compared to other kids their age.

Next I had purchased tickets for a showing of Waking the T. Rex: The Story of Sue in the 3-D Cinema, but I can’t really report on it beyond this picture of Teddy in the glasses:

He lasted for about five seconds into the loud and toothy opening and then demanded to be taken out. Matt said that it wasn’t really scary (and was in fact very cool) once you got past the beginning, but I’d recommend saving your money if you’ve got a skittish little one.

It didn’t take Teddy too long to recover once we moved onto the Mathematica exhibit, a classic at the museum which was created by design gurus Charles and Ray Eames and opened in 1981. I’m not really sure how much any of us learned in this exhibit which explores different areas of math including probability, Boolean algebra, and logic. But I liked the cool post-modern aesthetic and the history wall showing a timeline of achievements in math. The boys mostly played with the funny mirror that’s tucked in one corner.

The Discovery Center is intended for children ages birth through 8, but our 9-year-old enjoyed this part of the museum too. He focused on building a ball tunnel out of pieces of PVC pipe while Teddy and Matt tried unsuccessfully to untangle themselves from these two pieces of webbing without loosening their hands.

There are lots of hands-on exhibits in this cozy, self-contained area and I would suggest that anyone visiting the museum with a toddler head there first.

The Lightening! show in the Theatre of Electricity is worth a visit. You’ll get to see actual lightening produced indoors on an enormous generator that looks like it might have been used to bring the Bride of Frankestein to life. It was during this performance that I learned the true reason we’re safe from lightening in our cars – not, as we have been told, because the rubber tires ground us, but because the metal body acts like a cage and absorbs the current all around us, keeping us safe.

Seeing is Deceiving explores how vision works by offering a series of various optical illusions that visitors are invited to try. Most of them involved staring and spinning until I was sure that Tommy would end up on the floor from dizziness.

Tommy and I then spent a great deal of time in the temporary What I Eat: Around the World in 25 Diets exhibit (open through January 1, 2012) which shows photographs of people around the world and all of the calories they each consumed on a given day. The caloric intake ranges from 800 to 12,300 and the accompanying panels allow each person to explain a bit about why they eat as they do.

The Making Models and Mapping the World Around us Exhibits (which are adjacent to each other) offer a chance to explore how scientists use models to understand how everything from packing containers to the human heart work best. One interactive game invites users to create a model of a place using sounds that you’d find there.

Last of all (but far from least) we got our wiggles out at the Science in the Park exhibit. By now the kids were pretty much burned out and proabably weren’t really learning from the activities they were trying, but they did enjoy the chance to time themselves as they ran along a brief sprinter’s course set up against the wall.

Finally Matt turned to me and suggested it might be time to leave and I realized that we had spent seven hours at the museum without even realizing it! This was a new museum record for my family and speaks to just how engaging the Museum of Science is – all that time and still had exhibits left to see. And since Boston isn’t exactly known for its stellar weather, isn’t it nice to know there’s a place where your family can be diverted indoors for hours on end?

“Not worth it,” you may have told yourself. “Too salty; more batter than beast.” And then turned your attention to other more satisfying items on the menu.

Well I’m here to tell you that you, my friend, have been missing out on the true and deep essence of all that a fried clam has to offer.

My own childhood memories of fried clams are thus: They were always purchased at a building that could only be described as a “shack” preferably right on the beach. They were quahogs (pronounced “kwaw-hog” in my family, “co-hog” in others), meaning that they had a decent sized belly – and yes, we always ordered the whole-belly clams, because a clam without a belly is, well, just a chewy bit of fried sea trash. They were only eaten with tartar sauce – never ketchup – and any French fries that accompanied them would be doused with white vinegar. A large Pepsi, always Pepsi, never Coke, although I preferred Coke, was the only proper accompaniment to this meal until one was old enough to have a plastic cup of beer. On family visits to my grandparents’ house in southern Maine or stays with aunts and uncles on Cape Cod we might eat them for lunch every day, the only acceptable substitute or addition being a lobster roll (which came with its own set of rules involving a top-sliced and buttered white hot dog bun containing appropriately large chunks of lobster that were not tampered with too much).

What I don’t remember is debates about where the clams would come from. I remember crossing hot sand and asphalt; sand in my bathing suit and a bit in my food; lobster traps, buoys, and old nets hung from the ceiling; a splintery picnic table or two; and not being allowed to swim for an hour after eating. But I couldn’t tell you the name of the establishment where the clams were purchased (and indeed, it is entirely possible that the sign on said establishment was faded and peeling and difficult to read). I realize now that it is altogether possible that it was never discussed where we would go to get the clams – as with all of the other rules surrounding these summer meals, there was an agreement about the best place to purchase them that was so obvious and ingrained as to be unspoken.

Since I never really considered the origins of these clams I was eating, it was with some surprise that I learned as an adult that clam shacks are numerous and subject to intense debate that have even been known to divide families. Entire books have been dedicated to reviewing them, comparing the merits of various frying techniques and whether fries or onion rings make the best accompaniment. In the summer season it would be possible to start on the shores of the Long Island Sound in Connecticut and work one’s way up to Bar Harbor, Maine eating nothing but fried clams in an attempt to choose the best – this decision being utterly subjective and dependent on how crispy you like your clams or whether you prefer a slightly softer, oilier finish.

Clearly I haven’t spent enough time eating fried clams as an adult. When Matt and I spent a month in Boston with Tommy in the summer of 2003, we made one foray north of the city to Woodman’s in Essex, which actually claims to be the birthplace of the fried clam and is for many people the only place to purchase this elemental food. The clams are soft and a little greasy, which I prefer, and Matt and I devoured a quart of them while Tommy, who was just over a year old, ate only French fries and ketchup. I promised myself that we would come back so that he could try the clams, but one thing and then another got in the way and we never returned.

So it was when we left for our family vacation to Boston this summer that neither of my children had ever sampled a fried clam. It was obvious to me that we needed to conduct our own fried clam experiment in a quest to see if I could in any way replicate my childhood memories.

We began our experiment on the drive up to Boston when we stopped in Mystic, Connecticut at the Sea Swirl. The fried clams here are delicious – cooked well, with a good balance between batter, grease, and clam. But it is the coleslaw and the lobster roll that really were my favorite items. And if you ask Teddy? Well, he was all about the ice cream. In fact, while Tommy did eat (and declare his love for) his first fried clam, Teddy declined to try one, sticking instead to his old favorite of a cheeseburger.

Our second fried clam foray is better left unmentioned (as was the entire dining experience, frankly). While we were in Boston, we decided that we had to try Legal Seafoods, reputed to be one of Boston’s best restaurants and a local institution. This was an intensely disappointing experience for me, as the food, including the fried clams, was almost uniformly bland.

We had one chance left to get it right, heading out of the city via Ipswich where the Clam Box is arguably Woodman’s top contender for the title of World’s Best Fried Clams (and mind that I’m just repeating what I’ve heard, not trying to start a fight here). This clam shack does have the virtue of actually being shaped like a box of clams, which to my mind puts it a little ahead of the pack.

The secret here is that the clams are actually fried twice, leaving them impeccably crispy and not at all oily. Also double fried (and dipped in the same batter) are the onion rings. The verdict?

I loved the onion rings – they may have been the best I’ve ever eaten – and I liked the clams. But they weren’t quite as satisfying as I had hoped. I think that maybe the double frying takes out some of the texture that to me is the essence of the best in fried clams. I want to know that what I’m eating came from the sea. But I will always remember The Clam Box fondly, for it was here that Teddy, my more reluctant eater, tasted his first fried clam and dubbed it “pretty good!”

I realized after this trip the need to conduct further research into this fried clam question until we find a place as automatic and unquestioned as the clam shacks of my childhood. So as clam shacks up and down the New England coast get ready to shutter for the winter, let’s just call the results of our fried clam experiment inconclusive and plan to seek further funding and time to resolve the issue in the future. It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it.

For Wanderfood Wednesday at Wanderlust and Lipstick. Do you have any childhood foods that evoke strong memories? Please feel free to share in the comments.

Thanks to all who entered and to Smart Destinations for sponsoring the giveaway.

Since my site was down most of the day on Friday, I have extended this giveaway to Monday, August 8 at 5 p.m. EST.

When I plan a family trip to a city, especially a shorter trip like our recent four-day visit to Boston, I usually do a fair bit of advance planning. My approach is usually to start by making a list of potential things I think we’ll enjoy seeing and doing. I come up with this list in different ways. If I’ve visited the city before myself and know it well, some of the ideas come from my own experience. I also take a walk through all of my favorite family travel blogs to see if I find any good recommendations there. I might throw out a few questions via Facebook or Twitter, to see if anyone I hang out with there has a suggestion. And of course, I turn to Google for help too.

The list is without fail too long, but I like to start out big and whittle it down. I’m not a fan of cramming too much in on a vacation – my motto is to treat every place I visit as if I’ll be back – and usually plan no more than one or two definite things to see and do for each day of our visit, relying on the opinions of my children, advice of friends, and my own instincts to make (sometimes regretful) cuts until I have a manageable number of agenda items for each day.

From there I usually sketch out a plan of what we’ll do on each day of our trip and in what order, looking at how we’ll get from Point A to Point B and where we might eat along the way. This plan is flexible of course. For example, on our recent visit to Boston, I had planned to start the trip by walking the Freedom Trail. When I checked the weather report the day before we left and realized that Friday, the first full day of our vacation, was going to be 100 degrees, I quickly made some changes to our plan and decided that Friday would be better spent entirely indoors. So instead of tromping around it the heat, we spent a blissful and cool six hours in the Museum of Science instead, saving the Freedom Trail for Sunday when the weather broke.

One thing was a little bit different about my planning for this Boston trip, because I actually bought some of our admission tickets before we left, not something I’m generally prone to do because I don’t like to be committed in advance. I did this because last spring Smart Destinations gave one adult Go Select pass, which I chose to use for our trip to Boston. Go Select allows customers to choose from a list of attractions in a given city (the list in each city is a little limited, so you may not find everything you are looking for, although in Boston I did). You must choose at least two places to visit, and then a discount is applied after you make your choices. The passes are good for 30 days from their first use, so they are great for longer vacations, or even if you living in one of the cities that Smart Destinations serves and are interested in entertaining your family during the summer months.

As an example of how much you might save, I purchased one adult and two child Go Select passes for Boston. I bought tickets for five attractions: a Fenway Park tour, the Museum of Science, the New England Aquarium, the Paul Revere House, and the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum. In doing so, I saved a $31 or 20 percent of my overall total if I purchased admission at each location. Smart Destinations emailed me the passes, which I printed off on my home computer (a nice feature here is that I had the option to also print information about each place I would be visiting including the address and hours it is open).

Of course, I’m always happy to save a little money, but for me the real value in the Go Select passes was the fact that when we arrived at the attractions and museums, they allowed us to skip the lines during the busy summer season. When I bought the passes, I was dubious that we would be able to walk up to the information desk at each location, hand them our passes, and be admitted, but that’s exactly what happened. Smart Destinations claims to have worked hard to train the vendors they work with, and in Boston it really showed. We easily saved 20 to 30 minutes of waiting at both the science museum and the aquarium, and as those of you who travel with young children know, that time is invaluable. Starting our museum visit off with a long wait can be the difference between an interested and engaged child and one who needs cajoling into good humor.

I will definitely look at buying these passes again when I visit one of the cities that Smart Destinations serves (there are thirteen ranging from Maui to Miami) because they saved me money and time. If for some reason I had to cancel my trip, I could return the passes for a full refund for a year after I bought them. The only disadvantage would have come if we had decided not to visit one of the attractions on the list; for this reason I wouldn’t include any attraction or museum in my purchase that I was on the fence about. And I’d be sure not to cram so much into the pass that I had no room in the schedule for spontaneity.

Go Select is not the only option when purchasing passes from Smart Destinations. You can also choose a Go Card, which offers blanket admission to more attractions (in Boston there are 70) for a set number of days and a steeper discount. Yet another product is the Family FunPass, which bundles the attractions that Smart Destinations has deemed the top four for a given city. In Boston, that includes the Museum of Science, the Fenway Park tour, a high-speed whale watch, and the Franklin Park Zoo. These cards are good for 60 days from their first use.

And here’s the good news: Smart Destinations has offered me four FunPasses to give away!

The winner picks the city, so if you’re planning to visit or live in Boston, New York, San Diego, Los Angeles, or San Francisco, you could get free admission to four attractions or museums for yourself and three friends or family members. There’s also a Southern California pass that will get you into Legoland, Universal Studios Hollywod, the San Diego Zoo, and Knott’s Berry Farm.

For your chance to win a Family FunPass, simply leave a comment here sharing your favorite trip-planning tip. This contest is open until 5 p.m. EST on Friday, August 5 Monday, August 8.

As I mentioned in this post, Smart Destinations game me one free Go Select pass, but they did not ask me to purchase the additional three and I did not receive any extra discount on them. All of the opinions I express here are my own and you can always count on me to let you know if I’ve gotten something for free.

Before I get started, a few caveats about Giacomo’s: They are open nightly, but there’s always a line (and truly, don’t even think about eating there on the weekend). They don’t take reservations. You must pay cash. The interior is miniscule, the wine list not much more expansive. There are no desserts on the menu. The service isn’t unfriendly, but is of necessity efficient in the extreme and you certainly won’t linger. You might think these things preclude eating there with kids, but frankly, with its noisy crowded interior, no one will notice if your little one fusses. You’ll get your food fast and the entrées are big enough to share. And if you’ve got two cell phones and more than one adult, one of you can wait in line while the other takes the kids to wander around the fascinating warren of streets that surround it.

And of course, there’s the food. What makes a visit to worth it is the warm, chewy garlic bread; the best fried calamari I’ve ever had in the United States; and the plates of pasta loaded with fresh seafood of every variety and topped with your choice of several homemade sauces. They look something like this:

On the evening we dined there we arrived to discover that the air conditioning wasn’t working. Undeterred by this and by the fact that we were accompanied by hungry, crabby children, we decided to wait. And sultry as it was in that dining room, I’m not sorry, especially since it meant Teddy (who is inclined always and everywhere to order a cheeseburger) tried mussels for the first time. At first he just wasn’t sure about them.

But once he figured out how to get them out of the shell and piled on a plate, he had at them and proclaimed them a thumb’s up.

Tommy also had mussels, choosing to accompany his with spaghetti.

And at the end of the meal, the boys got an additional reward of a nice long spree in the fountains that line the new Rose Kennedy Greenway, just steps away from Giacomo’s front door and occupying the spot where prior to the Big Dig the freeway once loomed overhead.

Not pictured here, because sometimes greedy eating trumps photography, is the delicious pistachio cannoli that Matt bought for us to share from Mike’s Pastry across the street. It could be argued that the cannolis at Mike’s are what make any trip to Boston worth it. Next time you’re there, give them a try and let me know.

You’ll find Giacomo’s in the North End of Boston on Hanover Street, right along the Freedom Trail and steps from the Old North Church. They do also have a branch in the Back Bay that will accept your check, let you reserve a table, and serve you some sweets, but I’m frankly just dubious about that side of the operation. To me, Giacomo’s is synonymous with good North End eating.

If you’re looking for more yummy posts, be sure to visit Wanderfood Wednesday at Wanderlust and Lipstick.

The original building (minus the tower) was constructed in the mid-nineteenth century when water used to lap its doorstep and the trade schooners that sailed from Europe with precious cargo would poke their prows into the large and gracious windows of the Counting Room. This is where guests of the hotel now enjoy breakfast beneath a high gallery where guards once patrolled, protecting the treasure and currency that passed through the doors.

Cars now park where ships once docked, and in the early twentieth century the federal government decided it needed more space and built the tower complete with the famous clock faces, notorious for many years for showing four different times, all of them incorrect. It was used for offices until the 1980s when it was virtually abandoned by both the federal and local government and fell into a state of total decay before being rescued by Marriott.

The rotunda from the original building is still visible from the lobby and the first floor, wearing the Great Seal of the United States, the only building outside of Washington, DC to do so. Marriott spared no expense or care in its restoration and the seal, the rotunda, and the main entrance to the building, have all been returned to full glory:

Our suite on the 17^th floor was spacious and beautifully furnished. We had a full living area with a nicely appointed kitchen and a fold-out sleeper sofa for the boys and a bedroom with a king-sized bed for me and Matt.

Although frankly, it’s amazing that we noticed anything about the room given that these were our views:

And that’s not the only place to get a good view. The 26^th floor offers the city’s only outdoor observation deck. And here’s an insider tip: The public is welcome to visit from Monday to Thursday. Stop by the front desk, pay 3 dollars a person, and you’ll be escorted up. Although if you stay at the hotel, it’s yours for the visiting any time.

A few floors below, the game room offers a place to play some air hockey and check out the clock mechanism, now a single one for all four faces guaranteeing a much more accurate time. One thing I really loved there was the chance to see a small portion of one clock face from the inside.

What other good things do I have to say about the Custom House? There are plenty. Everyone who worked there was friendly and helpful. It was clear that the staff feel a real sense of pride and ownership of “their” historic building. I watched the concierge spend a good twenty minutes helping guests plan their entire day from sightseeing to meals.

In terms of other family-friendly amenities, a pay-per-item breakfast is served in the Counting Room, with decent complimentary coffee. But I’d recommend economizing by bringing your own breakfast food (the kitchen comes equipped with a microwave, blender, toaster, coffee maker, and refrigerator as well as all the dishes and cutlery you’ll need ) or stepping over to Quincy Market across the street to buy something from one of the vendors there. You’ll also find laundry facilities and free wi-fi.

Even if they were a bit old for it, the boys loved the Activity Center on the 20^th floor, which comes complete with a small jungle gym and many other toys (I know that had we stayed here when either of them was little, one of us would have been hanging out there with a toddler very early in the morning). In this area you’ll also find a private movie theatre complete with leather seats and surround sound. The hotel shows movies there for guests, but if you bring your DVDs you can also schedule a family movie night (check with the front desk staff to make sure it’s not in use). When you check in, you’ll also receive a full schedule of activities that includes everything from tours of the hotel (which I highly recommend) to a free wine and cheese reception on Fridays to puzzle and game time for the kids.

And last but far from least, there’s the fact that the iconic building is visible from so many spots in the city. My boys loved looking for it and it clearly made Boston feel more like it belonged to them. Teddy in particular would cry out “there’s the Custom House!” whenever he spotted it as if it were a long-lost friend. We saw it from the deck of the USS Constitution,

from the water taxi that took us from Charlestown to Long Wharf,

And from the New England Aquarium.

It’s a rare thing for a hotel to capture my children’s imaginations so completely. It is now a part of their experience of Boston – frankly I can’t imagine staying anywhere else on repeat visits.

We were given a significant discount on our suite and free parking at the Custom House. Rates are definitely high during the summer (approaching $500 plus $40 a day for valet parking) but get lower once the high season is over – I found a suite over a weekend in mid-September for $379 a night on their website.

I’m a fan of the sweet cornbread that is served to all customers when they sit down, and love to pair it with a bowl of the thick chowder, loaded with potatoes and clams.

In fact, the menu is full of traditional New England fare, none more my favorite than a dessert of Indian  pudding, an amalgam of cornmeal, milk, butter, and molasses. Pretty and light it ain’t. It is rich, dense, almost chewy – a dowdy, reliable pleasure. It’s served warm, usually with vanilla ice cream, although I like mine with a huge gob of whipped cream, which melts and pools around the edges.

There’s something essentially puritanical about Indian pudding, which feels both wholesome and a little punishing while also satisfying some deeper craving for sweet satisfaction. You definitely don’t get up from the table hungry when you’ve eaten it.

However, Indian pudding isn’t for everyone, so I was a little nervous that Tommy might not care for it.

I needn’t have worried.

For Wanderfood Wednesday at Wanderlust and Lipstick.

Wondering what we’re up to? We’ve headed from Boston to Vermont and I’m taking a few days to just enjoy myself. Next week I’ll be back in force with the full story on our trip to Boston.

(And you see that tower with the clock in the background? That’s the Marriott Custom House, where we’re staying. Lucky us!)

Friday promises to be worse, so I think we’ll be mostly staying indoors at the Museum of Science.

In other news, today is the last day to enter to win a Toshiba Mini Netbook – if you haven’t checked out this great giveaway, run don’t walk because it’s going fast.

For Photo Friday at Delicious Baby. Much more about Boston to come!

When I think about how long I’ve been blogging (going on three years now) and how many times I’ve driven to and from Vermont from Delaware during that time (don’t have an exact number, but probably two dozen) I can’t believe I’ve never written a post about Sylvester’s Restaurant in Northampton, Massachusetts. Past the halfway point on the drive up, always what we hit right around brunch time on the way home, Sylvester’s has become one of our go-tos, a place as familiar to my family as if we actually did live up the street.

Sylvester’s is named after Sylvester Graham because it is located in what was once his home. I’m not sure that this 19^th-century advocate of dietary reform, vegetarian, teetotaler, and inventor of graham crackers would approve of the sybaritic pleasures to be found under what was once his roof, but no one seems all that concerned.

There’s lots that is local and organic and sustainable on the menu here. There’s also lots of butter. And this peppermint hot chocolate, which it would be possible to bathe in.

Or just enjoy a whole heck of a lot – that’s real whipped cream, under which chocolate and cinnamon lurk in abundant amounts.

Sylvester’s has amazing pancakes and cinnamon bun French toast, but I always find it hard to order anything but the huevos rancheros, coated with homemade salsa and served with two slabs of cornbread.

Matt is more adventurous than I am. This time he went ethnic and ordered the Irish eggs Benedict – corned beef hash drenched in hollandaise.

Tommy always assembles his own omelet, which suits him just fine since he doesn’t care for cheese but will sometimes combine bacon, ham, and sausage to great effect. Teddy swears by the clam chowder. (One of the things I love about Sylvester’s is that they serve breakfast and lunch and don’t care if your table orders a hybrid of the two).The coffee is excellent and we always get some to take with us. And sometimes cookies or brownies that are as big as my face. In case that cornbread didn’t fill me up.

So Sylvester’s may be almost 300 miles from where I live, but I consider it my neighborhood joint, along with everyone who actually lives in Northampton – the place is always hopping and on weekends you’ll wait for brunch with a long line of pierced college kids (Smith is right up the street) and families.

It’s worth it.

For Wanderfood Wednesday at Wanderlust and Lipstick.