Hey! Did you enter our photo identification contest? If not, you should!

I’m writing from the most adorable beach cottage/house ever! My friend Ashley’s parents, Tim and Fannie, moved from Midlothian, VA to Hull, MA a few years ago. When they heard we were coming to the Boston area on WVT, they generously offered to host us for a few days.

Hull is a small town across the harbor from Boston, so I expected it to look something like Baltimore–on the water, but mostly docks and no beach. Instead, it’s an adorable, quaint beach town, but not one of those ritzy, only-boat-shoes-and-madras-print towns; it’s very real, as if people actually live here (which they do). There are small streets, lined with unique New England beach cottages, some of which are summer homes and some of which are year-round homes.

When we arrived Friday evening, we got a tour de Hull courtesy of Tim and Fannie:

It has a view of the Boston skyline. Tim’s commute to downtown Boston is a 20-minute ferry ride. He even has “ferry friends” with the other regular commuters!

This is my first time experiencing a New England beach town. The boardwalk on Nantasket beach has several ice cream and fried dough establishments, as well as Fascination, which is like Skee-ball.

This particular arcade has been in operation since 1914, according to Tim.

 

Hull is such a great little town; I love it! There’s a sandy rock beach on one side and the bay on the other. Fannie walks on the beach every day, and their house has tons of cool treasures that washed up on shore.

One of their favorite pastimes is scanning the weekly “Police Report” section of the Hull Times, where all of the weeks major crimes are reported. I was stunned to see that Hull is such a dangerous and crime-ridden area:

 

On Saturday afternoon, after a leisurely walk on the beach, we took the ferry into Boston.

 

We walked around Boston Common, where I was very excited to see some ducklings:

These kids were having a great time swimming in the fountain, but a park attendant put a damper on their fun.

We looked at the very old tombstones in the Granary Burying Ground, which dates back to the 1660’s!

And for dinner, we walked around the North End and went to one of our favorite restaurants, Rabia’s. There was an awesome narwhal chalk mural behind our table.

Harrison realized that though (or perhaps) because he went to school in Cambridge, he has never been to Boston in the summer months. It has a different feel: a lot more tourists and lots of people outside, enjoying the common spaces in the warm weather.

Dessert was a lobster claw (or at least, part of it!) at Caffé Vittoria. It really is as big as it looks.

After walking around and choking over real estate prices (We found a condo for $5.5 million. Anyone want to go halfsies?), we headed back on the ferry…

…which is nice because you can see the Boston skyline, all lit-up at night.

Having lived in government subsidized housing on grad student salaries for the past five years, I am always shocked to encounter the displays of wealth in a large city. I don’t begrudge these people; I’m just amazed that people can not only afford million dollar yachts, but also moor them in prime harbor real estate right off the North End. Money, man.

Tim gave us another example. Two tandem parking spaces in Beacon Hill just went to auction and were sold for $560,000. Two homeowners apparently got in a bidding war over them. Geeeeez.

Now, we’re off to explore Cambridge for the afternoon! ❤ Boston ❤