Who knows where we’ll be next year – maybe we’ll be in Boston, maybe we won’t. So this weekend, we took the opportunity to do a couple of those things we’d always wanted to do but never had the chance before. Saturday morning, we hit the road, briefly, for a day trip to Providence. Aimee had the great idea of checking out the RISD Museum, wandering the Brown campus, and dining on Thayer Street.
The museum was a little gem, architecturally interesting, manageably sized, full of interesting art and design. It really felt like (the day before) the first day of spring, warm enough to leave our coats in the museum’s coat check and venture outside into their sculpture garden. After a few hours perusing their permanent collection and Pendleton House, nicely connected via multiple passages and strange inter-architectural hallways, we walked across the main part of the campus of Brown, where I’d never been before. I’m always surprised to see the variety of building materials on most college campuses, after Amherst’s fairly uniform red brick quad. We dined at Kartabar and picked up some Brown attire for the Brown nephew before heading back to Boston (via the Bonanza Bus terminal on the outskirts of Providence for a photo booth opportunity).
Saturday night, we met Meeghan and Sean for dinner at one of the only Inman Square restaurants we hadn’t been to yet, Argana. We had a bunch of tapas plates, which were very good. After dinner, we headed across the street to Ryles, a local institution we’d never taken the time to visit before. That night, Eguie Castrillo and his ensemble were performing, and the four of us enjoyed the two sets that went on until around midnight. The atmosphere wasn’t of a small, intimate jazz club, as Aimee pointed out, but more like a place for jazz where you can also eat dinner (and talk through the music, if you’re sitting in the back of the room). I thought the music was terrific – in addition to Castrillo on lead percussion, the band featured congas, drums, piano, bass, saxophone, flute, trumpet, and trombone. The set consisted of mostly originals, with some Miles Davis and John Coltrane thrown in as well. As it’s about a five minute walk from my house, we’ll have to go there again sometime. 
Sunday afternoon, we headed out to see another local institution, the South Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade. After having never been there in my life, I now visited the Broadway stop on the red line for the second time in four days. There were a few other people there this time, a few thousand, I’d say. We watched the parade for about an hour, during which time we saw numerous high school marching bands, pipe bands, Revolutionary War re-enacters, local politicians and their handlers, firemen and police officers, pageant queens, and even the local Star Wars fans who came together to form some sort of imperial army division. Lots of great people watching, and a few good pictures:
For all the details of the experience, though, be sure to check out my St. Patrick’s Day Parade photoset on Flickr – I’ve taken the news of Yahoo!’s acquisition of Flickr as reason to go pro and get enough storage capacity to upload lots of photos at full size, so go enjoy them. Pay special attention to the entire division of Star Wars stormtroopers led by Darth Vader on parade.
