Boccia, Cannoli, nerd stores and real witches!

ok, I admit, that title might be a little confusing... but I couldn't find a better way to describe my weekend! Kristen is visiting from Wisconsin, so we decided to explore Boston on friday and ended up spending most of our time in the North End - the area that is also known as Boston's Little Italy :) yep, sounds about right! We started our tour in Cambridge, actually, where we walked over the Harvard campus and went to the Hardvard Bookstore - to buy chocolate, apparently. Then, we continued in the North End, at Mike's pastries to be precise, where we tried Boston's most famous canoli! I actually prefer the Almond Sea Salt Dark Chocolate we got at the bookstore... ;) But, anyways, the North End is pretty cool and we enjoyed parts of the Freedom Trail until we found this little park area, right at the water, where some kids were playing baseball, four elderly men were playing cards while smoking cigars, and four other, well-tanned elderly men were playing Boccia. Boccia! I think, the last time I played Boccia was in my grandfather's garden about ten years ago! Boccia! :) *happy* Kristen had never seen it before, so we stopped and watched them play for a while... But not for long ;)

One of the guys came over (and yes, they really were Italian!) and offered us a second set, so we used the lane right next to them to play some ball :) oh my gosh, I had so much fun.... I felt like I was seven years old again, playing with my grandfather in his garden! It was awesome! And, like I said, the guys were real (Bostonian) Italians, so we were communicating in a very interesting, bilingual chatter that made me even happier! Amo la lingua italiana! :) So, we were playing for fun, at first, but then one of the guys refreshened my memory and taught us the rules again, so we finally knew what we were doing with those balls :D

The idea is to get your balls as close to the pallino (the small yellow ball) as possible. And guess who threw the red balls? ;) Actually, Kristen is a natural and beat me in a couple of games.... We played for almost two hours, we just couldn't stop....

And we couldn't resist the italian charm :D Before we left, we asked for directions for a good Italian restaurant, which we were promptly provided with, and said goodbye to everyone in the good old-fashioned italian way: with a hearty hug and a kiss on each cheek :) oh how I love Italians... :D

After this authentic Italian experience in Boston's North End, we decided to widen our cirle a little bit more and drive up to Salem on Saturday. It was the last Saturday before Halloween - we were not the only ones with this idea... We seemed to be two of the very few people who didn't bring a costume though... So I went shopping :D

Well, what do you think? Am I a witch or am I a witch? :D God, I love Salem! I love it! It's full of quirky people, nerd stores and craft shops, a place where everybody believes in magic or history and on top of that, it is a beautiful little town! Of course, the creatures get a little more eerie around Halloween....

But, hey, it's Halloween right? :D At some point, while we were walking through town, we noticed that everybody was looking up into the sky. People were pointing and taking pictures, so we turned our eyes up as well. Guess what we saw? I still can't believe it... I still don't know how that's even possible... not one, not two, no five (that's right, FIVE) different rainbows! Five!!!! And they were crossing each other, some pale, some really bright... I took a couple of pictures, here's one

Isn't that just awesome? And also just a little bit creepy? ;) man... and to see that in Salem? Weird.... 

To complete our trip to the witch captial of the east coast, we decided to take the witch walk with our tourguide Tom, who's also a witch!

He's not even half as scary as he looks on this picture :) The tour was pretty awesome, actually. That guy has an aweful lot of energy :) I also got to take a picture with Captain Jack Sparrow, which you might have seen on facebook :) We left before the real fun started though - we were both just way too tired to hang around for the fireworks... but, hey, now we get to sit at home and wait for a hurricane - that's pretty exciting too ;)