boston update - day 1 - saturday

we're back! the train ride up to boston on friday nite and saturday morning was good - the train wasn't very crowded so we were able to each use 2 seats and sleep a bit. we pulled into south station right on time at 8 a.m. and walked the 1/2 mile to our hotel. we were too early to check in so we found a restroom in the lobby and got changed and cleaned up a bit. we grabbed breakfast in the hotel restaurant - jeremy loves hotel restaurants. it was yummy but pricey - jer's breakfast buffet was $21! we grabbed a cab and headed over to the realtors' office where we met up with my parents. we were scheduled to see 5 houses on saturday so we headed out. house #1 was in quincy and only a short walk to the t station - good for jeremy's commute. it was our favorite house of the day, but it did have some drawbacks. there's a gorgeous in ground pool in the backyard, but it isn't fenced off in any way which isn't good for beagles or babies. my dad also had some concerns about the lack of insulation in the attic as well as how the roof was vented. that's why dad was there - because that's not stuff we would notice on our own! despite the drawbacks, we're keeping this one on the list. house #2 was in milton, a little further from the t, but a better overall town with a better school system. the house was ok but there were just too many things wrong with it for us to keep in on our list. the yard was tiny which doesn't really work for all the hounds. there was also some weirdness going on in the attic with some really classy cardboard-box insulation. not sure what they were hiding with that. my dad had a bunch of other concerns, making this one just not worth the money :( house #3 had a ton of promise. it is an 1870 farmhouse on a gorgeous lot in milton. the yard and landscaping were awesome so we had a ton of hope for the inside. unwarranted, unfortunately. the inside was interesting. very quirky, with little rhyme or reason to the decor and finishes. some rooms were really nice and others were horribly outdated. it was listed as 2 bath house, but unfortunately one of the bathrooms was in the unfinished basement just like our last house we rented on kensington avenue here in richmond. good for jeremy and monkey, except that they'd bump their heads since the ceilings were only 6' high. also the rooms were just too small and would never fit our current furniture. this one did not make the list :( we were SO excited about house #4. it was our favorite house from our internet research before the trip. it is a gorgeous 6 (yes 6!!!) bedroom colonial built in 1893. it has everything we want (except central air - sorry jeremy!) we pulled up for our showing and rang the bell. nothing. so our realtor called the listing agent only to find out that the owners took it off the market because the offer they had made on another house had fallen through. wicked bummer. :( house #5 really only made our list to look at because of the central air and promise of a short walk to the beach. it is not enough square footage but we figured we'd check it out anyway. the layout actually made the smaller size workable, but again my dad found too much wrong with it. it needed a new roof and a complete exterior paint job. more work than we have time for! no dice :( so day one we saw 5 houses and only one was good enough to keep in consideration. oh well. after the houses, we had tickets to the red sox game. our realtor sent us in the direction of fenway park and we were off. somewhere along the way, my dad decided that we had plenty of time to go back to the hotel before the game despite the fact that none of us are too familiar with the city of boston. we had a map that mom had bought but it was a terribly un-user-friendly map that just caused more issues than it helped. we proceeded to drive around all of boston for almost 3 hours trying to get to the hotel and then just back to the fenway area. my dad was driving like a madman - pretty much just fitting in with the rest of beantown drivers - and cursing up a storm. finally we figured out how to get near fenway. we found a parking lot where they were charging $30 for parking. at that point we didn't care - we were late for the game and we all had needed to pee for hours at that point. we were just happy to be getting out of the car. but just as we were about to pull into the lot, a parking spot on the street opened up so we grabbed that. (but, none of us considered putting quarters in the meter... more on this later.) the game was fun. fenway was packed as it was home opening weekend for the sox. sox won 8-0 which was good given the drama we endured getting there. we headed back out to the car to head back to the hotel. there we found a fluorescent orange parking ticket waiting for us. bummer - until we realized that it was for only $25, which is still cheaper than they were charging to park in the lot! considering all the numerous traffic violations my dad had committed that day, this was a blessing. it could have been so much worse! somehow jeremy figured out how to use the bad, bad map to get us back to the hotels with minimal cursing and crazy dad driving. we grabbed some more expensive dinner at the hotel and crashed - happy to be sleeping in a comfy bed rather than on a train!