Charles Apple

Friday was exhausting. After a long day attending sessions, blogging and meeting folks with portfolios, I attended a reception and then went out for dinner and drinks.

I ended up around 3:30 a.m., reviewing a sophomore design portfolio — a pretty good one, too. I’ll be keeping an eye on her work over the next few semesters.

Despite this, I really wanted to see a slice of Boston. I also wanted an alternative for breakfast. And I wanted to see a little sunshine after several cloudy, rainy Boston days.

So Saturday, I set my alarm clock for 6 a.m. and I went out for a morning stroll.

I walked north of the hotel, to the Boston Public Garden. The park was beautiful.

The water was beautiful.

The girls in the park were beautiful.

Oh, wait! That’s Julie Elman, a professor at Ohio University! Not only is she beautiful, the page one work she did for us at The Virginian-Pilot is some of the most beautiful you’ll ever see.

Julie tells me she was talking to her mom. I know how she felt. I had difficulty getting a cell phone signal in the hotel, for some reason. I, too, went across the street to the park to call home.

The Public Garden is famous for its ducks and swans. They paddled around in the chilly water, hoping I’d toss in some quackers.

On the far side of the park is this wonderful bronze sculpture. The work commemorates the noted children’s book Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey.

Mama duck sits on a slight rise, overlooking the duck pond.

The baby ducks tag along behind. I figured these would be actual size, but they turned out to be about three times the size of real ducks. I realize, now, that actual size statues would be tiny.

I also watched kids as they walked up to the art. They felt compelled to pat each little duckling on its head. Very amusing to watch. I would have shot photos, but I didn’t want to creep out all the parents.

In fact, the sculpture celebrated its 20th birthday just the week before, according to The Beacon Hill Times. The sculptor herself — Nancy Schon, at the far right of the photo — attended the party.

Exiting the park’s north end, I came to the intersection of Charles and Beacon streets. The architecture was beautiful. And there were hardly any cars out to hamper picture-taking, that early in the morning.

I saw nowhere to eat breakfast, however. So I decided to continue north, up Charles Street, into the ultra-trendy Beacon Hill. Surely there, I figured, I could find something to eat.

This beautiful market was open, however:

It looked just like something out of a movie.

I continued up Charles Street until I came to the Charles Street Meeting House.

It was on my way back down Charles when I finally spotted it: A terrific breakfast place — The Paramount.

It was a very small, very quirky little place. They had this big sign on the wall, explaining why they didn’t want you to save a seat. Get in line first, order your food and then grab a seat. That’s how you keep from running out of seats, they said.

And damned if it didn’t work. The place was packed. But when I got my food — voilá — a table came open.

Brekfast was grilled the old-fashioned, mom-and-pop way.

Very, very cool place.

Once my early morning hunger was defeated, I had the urge to jump back into blogging and talking careers. So I walked back to the hotel.

One block away, however, I came across this interesting building just across the street from the Park Plaza: An interesting lingerie shop.

What’s so interesting about that? Well, to be honest, it was this little number that really caught my eye:

What the hell is that supposed to be? Is that, in some way, even halfway functional? It looked something straight out of Barbarella.

By 9 a.m., I had retrieved my computer and was setting up at blog central, preparing to begin the day’s posts.

I’m sorry I didn’t post my little travelogue earlier. But, like I wrote last night, I don’t regret it. We had a ball Saturday and Sunday.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 15th, 2007 at 10:40 am and is filed under Amusing stuff, Charles Apple, Getting a life, Networking, SND/Boston, Virginian-Pilot, Visual Editors, VizEds Blog, Workshops. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.