Boston Ops Conference

I just returned from my company’s operations conference in Boston, MA.  Every manager and maintenance supervisor was allowed to attend.  They flew us out there and put us up in this awesome hotel called the Westin Waterfront.  It was located in the financial district close to our corporate offices.  We fly in Wednesday, went to the hotel to change and headed off to a dinner/meet and greet on the 27^th floor.  The views and food were amazing.  It was nice to finally put a face with the person on the other end of the line.  We met a lot of people that work all over the country for Windsor. 

 

That night we went back to the hotel to relax and went to bed early.  Thursday we had meetings all day and ate a lot of delicious food.  After the meetings we had a little free time to explore Boston so Rochelle, Brenda and I went to Quincy Market/Faneuil Hall to check out the shopping and sites.  We wandered around a little bit to and ran into the Freedom Trail and Paul Revere’s House.

   

Thursday night we had our company’s annual awards ceremony and dinner. The entire theme for the weekend was sports in New England so the entire room was decked out with Boston Celtics, New England Patriots, Boston Red Sox, and Boston Bruins décor. We had dinner and almost everyone was getting extremely drunk while they passed out awards. At the end of the awards ceremony they had an Arrowsmith wannabe band play all night that we rocked out to.
 

Friday morning we woke up bright and early, had another fabulous breakfast and hoped on the Duck Tour. The Duck Tour is a tour around all of Boston in a bus that drives on the road and goes in the water while on the tour. The tour guide driving the bus was extremely funny and his favorite word was “wicked awesome”. We laughed so hard the whole time. I learned a lot about Boston and we got to see almost the entire city. The Duck took us back to the hotel, we had lunch and then it was time for everyone to fly home (except Heather and I). We were so happy we made the decision the stay and tour Boston for the weekend.

Heather and I took a taxi to our next hotel destination, Le Meridian MIT Hotel. It was absolutely gorgeous. We were only blocks away from Harvard’s campus so that was our first tourist stop on the trip. We walk just down the street (which really took like 20 min, people in Boston love to say it is just right down there when in reality it is a 20-30 min walk) to Harvard. We took lots of pictures and missed the tour so we took our own tour around the campus. I was amazed at how small the campus actually is. Also, I had to buy a sweatshirt from Harvard and got Danny a shirt.

Next we took the subway….our first time so of course we got pictures!

We went to the center of Boston and started our journey walking the Freedom Trail. This trail is about 3 miles long and stops at some really old historical places along the way. Heather and I being the crazy girls that we are got distracted every once in a while and would some how loose the trail. We would eventually find it again around another block and down the street but all in all I think we probably walk more like 6 miles when it was all said and done. We stopped at this yummy pastry shop, gift shops, restrooms, Quincy Market/Faneuil Hall (shopping and restaurants), benches (because our feet hurt so badly from walking so much) and we finally made it to the end. It was worth all pain!!! The history in this tiny city was incredible. I was completely blown away. The entire city felt like you were walking around a movie set. Speaking of movie sets we actually ran into a real one at Faneuil Hall. I LOVE IT!

After finishing the freedom trail we were famished and told that Stephanie’s on Newbury Street was a must for dinner one night. I am so glad we went because I have never had such delicious lobster in my life. I ordered a lobster roll and could not have been more pleased. We did meet up with Amy from Seattle at the restaurant because she decided to stay in Boston by herself and at a different hotel. After dinner we were exhausted from the long day so we took the subway back to the hotel and crashed.

Lost on the subway home! We kept getting on the wrong train!

Saturday we woke up early as to not miss anything. We ate at a little café on the way to the subway and then were off to Fenway Park.

We decided to do a tour of Fenway and I am so glad we did. We got to go onto the field and on top of the Green Monster (tallest home run wall in baseball). It was neat to learn about all the history and see it.

Then we jumped back on the subway and went to the Public Gardens. We were hungry again and stopped at another café for lunch. Café’s are on every corner it is so cute. The Public Gardens is a huge park with a lake and swan boats right in the middle of Boston. It was something everyone should see.
We heard some music and saw rainbow balloons while walking around so of course we HAD to check it out. Of course we ran straight into a gay pride festival and oh boy did we see it all! What are the chances??
Then we walked down Newbury Street (the Rodeo Drive of Boston). This street as some pretty expensive shops. Truly, I heard that Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen shop on that street so I was hoping to run into them. We shopped for a little while and then decided to go the New England Aquarium.
I am also so glad we did this because we weren’t sure if we were going to make it.
After the aquarium we walked along the harbor to North Boston to “Little Italy” were all the Italian’s live and have there restaurants. We choose the oldest restaurant and had awesome lobster ravioli and an Amaretto Cake that was to die for. After dinner we were so warn out that we went back to our hotel and crashed again. No night life for us OLD LADIES!!

Sunday, we woke up packed, headed to the airport only to discover that we were checking in at the wrong place and ran 10 minutes to another terminal, got threw security, and arrived just in time to board the plane. It was a crazy morning. We luckily took a taxi to the airport instead of the subway or we would have missed our plane.