Sunday, October 21, 2012

Mass MoCA and cute New England towns

Friday was the first rainy day of the week, but also marked the arrival of others in the house!  Travis' parents drove up from NC to spend the weekend with us (got in late Thursday night), and our friends Laura and Elizabeth came in late Friday afternoon.

We started the day with brunch at Ozzie's, a restaurant recommended by the people we rented the house from.  Their breakfast was SO good that we went back on Saturday!  My favorite was one of their October specials, the pumpkin pancakes.  Jenny LOVED her apple bread french toast...as you'll see below.



After breakfast, we decided to make our way to Alford, MA - being only 30 minutes away, it was obviously a must.  It was a tiny little "town" - not much to see...no stoplights...only a few buildings in one area - but I'm glad we went.

I'm so happy I'm an Alford.  :)





Travis was on umbrella duty so we could take pictures without ruining our cameras.






 Saturday was much nicer.  The trees were beautiful!




We spent most of Saturday at Mass MoCA (The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art), which was fantastic.







Can you find Laura, Elizabeth and I in the pic?





As we came in, we saw that there were some giant swings under one of the underpasses by the museum.  After wandering the property for a little while, we found them!



I found a FIVE  leaf clover!

The other side of that underpass had funny animals painted on the columns.  Jenny and I found our favorites.








We finished out the week by visiting Lee and Stockbridge - two cute towns south of where we'd been staying.  There were cute shops, a few antique stores (I love antiquing) and a great little creperie called the "Starving Artist Cafe".  I assume it's because they are so close to Tanglewood - funny!  There's a beautiful church in the middle of Lee's downtown whose wooden frame steeple is the tallest in New England.


Travis' "Stockbridge must" shows his music dorkiness.  (Love my musician hubby.)  One of the three places in composer Charles Ives' "Three Places in New England" is the Housatonic River at Stockbridge.  It was beautiful - easy to see how it could influence him!
















Now we're back home.  Not ready for work tomorrow!

Want to check out what else we did on this vacation?  Check out the other blogs:

The Mohawk Trail
Check out where we stayed, Edith Wharton's House, and Lenox Mass
Mount Greylock and the Hancock Shaker Village


6 comments:

  1. Thanks for visiting MASS MoCA. Glad you enjoyed it and glad you found the swings! Just thought you might be interested in the animals on the columns on the overpass. They are actually depictions (much enlarged) of some stuffed animal/pillows that Arnold PrintWorks produced in the early 20th century. Arnold was the company that built the factory complex that is now occupied by MASS MoCA. They were in North Adams for 75+ years on the MASS MoCA site and employed 4000 people

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    1. Thanks for your comment Katherine and for the information about the columns! That's really neat - now I like them even more. The buildings themselves were beautiful too.

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  2. I just found your blog at Kelly's Korner. I live in Boston too! Looking forward to reading more of your posts.

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    1. Hi Jodi! Very cool! Maybe we'll run into each other at a bloggy thing. :)

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  3. Glad I found you via KK. We were in Hyannis Port and Boston last October. It was the perfect time of year. How did that 5 leaf clover work out?

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    1. Fall (October) is my favorite time in New England! It's just perfect. 5 leaves = crazy good luck, right? :)

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