Welcome to BAHston!

My mom and I flew through Detroit and arrived in Boston around 1130pm. We checked into our hotel and were greeted by the beautiful mermaid above in the Hilton lobby. Even hearing all the hype about Hurricane Irene, we fell asleep quickly.

The next morning we ordered some breakfast in bed and then got our rental car. We were asked many times if we were getting ready to leave Boston and “escape the storm”, we would chuckle and mention we were just getting here and we definitely got some skeptical looks! My first view of Boston was nothing too special, but made me excited nonetheless!

Anyway by noon on Saturday we were in Portsmouth, New Hampshire to stay with our “distant cousin” Catherine Moran, Cliff Brown and his two daughters Julia and Caroline. It’s not really clear how we’re related to Catherine, at least not in the sense of what we should actually call each other, so we just go with cousin. My grandmother was a cousin of her grandfather; so if anyone knows what that means, let me know!
We headed down to downtown Portsmouth with everyone and walked around, saw the sights, and according to Catherine, the place was deserted. It seems everyone, not just the news channels, were taking Irene extremely seriously.

The cute town of Portsmouth was doing an art project/event that was called something along the lines of “Art Outside”, in which artists were allowed to paint murals or just general pictures on the sides of buildings. There was also lots of natural beauty and art around the town which I loved.

After having a great dinner at ‘Friendly Toast’ we headed home and prepared to hunker down for the hurricane. Catherine made us some beautiful drinks and the rain slowly began.

As we watched weather reports for probably a couple hours, the rain picked up a bit, and according to CNN the hurricane was SNARLING towards us. It was really a great night sharing stories and laughing about the lack of news given to us about where the hurricane actually was, or even when it might reach us. We headed to bed and woke up to pretty much the same weather as the night before. Some wind and somewhat heavy rain, but we still had power and cooked a leisurely brunch!

So far Boston/the east coast has been great, a bit rainy but fun and relaxing!