Recently, my best friend, Simone, and I decided to go exploring. She’s been living in Boston for about two months now and I’ve been here for a year and a summer. I didn’t explore much in my first year, at least not on purpose. I had enough adventures going to places I had to go, I didn’t need to look for more.
After a year though, my beaten path is fairly well beaten. So last Friday, Simone and I decided to go to Jamaica Plain. I’ve been told about the mystical community of artists, gays, and musicians that inhabit JP many times since I moved to Boston. In fact, more than one person recommended that I move there. But all I really know about JP is that there is a huge pond.
Simone and I got on the orange line with the above information, a free afternoon, and (thankfully) our smart phones. At first we just walked. It was one of those days where half the sky was a brilliant blue and half a thick, foreboding gray. But we walked on nonetheless. After doing a large circle below Green Street Station, we let my phone guide us to the pond.
Turns out, we went the wrong way on Green St. Once we went back the other way we found the grass-fed burger joint, the art posters, and the random-collection-of-interesting-stuff store. I knew at once that this was what people were thinking of when they told me I should live in JP. Simone and I went to the pond, which was gorgeous by the way, and talked for a bit. Then we went back to green street and found what turned our fun trip into an awesome adventure.
Specialty bread.
That’s right. We walked into the When Pig’s Fly bakery because I’ve bought their bread from Shaws before and thought it might be interesting to see the actual store. The sample was a cranberry, walnut, orange bread. Now, I don’t particularly like cranberries or walnut and yet that bread was like the sweetest cookie I’ve ever had.
After listening to Simone and I talk for a few minutes, the cashier offered us the rest of the sample loaf since the store was closing in an hour anyway. We were amazed. While eating the sample bread straight from the bag, we had to decide what loaves to actually buy. I had told myself I wasn’t going to buy anything, I’m a poor graduate student after all, but when you get half a loaf of delicious free bread you have to support the store, right?
Simone and I ended our adventure walking back down green street with a few nice pictures of the pond and two and a half loaves of bread; I got spinach, onion, and garlic while she got cinnamon raisin. We had no idea what our afternoon would bring when we started it, but I’d say it went quite well. And breakfast this week has been great.