The City on a Hill

On my way back to Minnesota from Costa Rica, I thought I would swing by Boston and see a few friends. Why not, right?

We planned it as a mini-Kampala reunion, and then it morphed into a Fogarty/Costa Rica party toward the end. Love it.

My friend Miriam, with numerous previous appearances on this blog, was in Uganda 2009-2010 doing research at the IDI with me. She picked me up at the airport (minus my bags), and we went out for sushi and wine at Ma Soba. The next day we hung out at Tufts in the AM. Me - trying to catch up on 3 weeks worth of email and work while Miriam had a class. But let’s be honest I didn’t get much work done. Tufts medical students = great people-watching!

After we got back to Miriam’s and my checked baggage was delivered, we did an epic walking tour of Boston. What a great tour guide, my dear Miriam, as we used the Freedom Trail app to guide us through some great New England history. It started out as a beautiful day, but by the time we made it to Modern Pastry in the North End, we were chilled to the bone and tired. Good thing my friend Mohamed is an ortho resident in town and was kind enough to swing by and pick us up after we had our fill of canoli, cheesecake, and hot tea. After downing a bottle of wine at Miriam’s and catching up on 3 years worth of life with Mohamed, we jetted off to meet our friend Sabine at Petit Robert. Sabine is one of the first people I met when I moved to Kampala in January 2009 and also worked at the IDI. She was in town for one of the big global AIDS meetings, the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI). It is kind of a big deal in the HIV research world, and Sabine was presenting at it, thus she is kind of a big deal. After much more wine and some amazing food, we set off once again to meet another beloved Kampalan, Jack Kelley in Cambridge, at Charlie’s Kitchen.

We took lots and lots of pictures and reminisced about Kampala. Then I proceeded to sleep the entire way back to Miriam’s, but somehow I got a second wind when we got home and started calling friends in Kampala. Thanks, Alison, for answering at work.

The next morning we picked up Sabine at her hotel, went to the Buttery for breakfast, then to Flour for post-breakfast sweets before some shopping. One of our stops was referred to by Sabine and Miriam as “the coffee store.” I realize there is this entire odd culture that I am missing out on because I don’t drink coffee and was totally lost among all the capsules at Nespresso. Sabine and I also got some alone time at Jacob Wirth in Chinatown while Miriam had a meeting at Tufts. As Sabine was about to fly out, she has a craving for French fries and insisted on McDonalds. Instead we steered her to the Beehive and had some signature drinks along with a delicious variation of fried potatoes.

After saying our goodbyes to Sabine we met our friend Katie at Giacomo’s in the North End for dinner. The last time I had seen Katie was just a week earlier on the beach in Costa Rica after her wedding, and she knew Miriam from the Fogarty Research program. We did lots of chatting about the upcoming match, and they did not yet know they were both going to match at UW in Seattle for Internal Medicine! After some amazing seafood pasta, we thought we would check out The Drink. For those of you from the Twin Cities, this does not in any way resemble the bar of the same name in Mpls. The Drink in Boston has old-school bartenders that get to know you and ask you about your drinking habits so they can surprise you with a tantalizing libation that suits your taste. Another Costa Rican wedding guest and fellow Fogarty scholar, Miranda, met us there. And I was happily surprised that evidence of her wedding night diving incident had almost completely healed – her face looked great, thanks to super-doctor and father-of-the-bride John’s adept superglueing skills.

Before heading back to Minnesota, Katie and I had one more good greasy breakfast Friday morning in the North End and then did some boutique shopping before heading out to the airport. American Airlines canceled my flight, twice, but I managed to get home eventually. My mother picked me up from the airport and I hung out with my family for a bit before I performed my almost-perfected unpack-repack routine and settled back into reality for the next 4 weeks (kind of).