Cambridge haunts: Darwin’s

Since starting my new job at the end of February, I’ve been exploring my new Cambridge neighborhood, wandering through the bustling streets lined with shops and cafes (and taking refuge in the latter on frigid days).

I was already familiar with Crema and its delicious tomato soup, but I have a new favorite sandwich shop: Darwin’s, tucked away on Mt. Auburn Street right across from the yard with all the crocuses.

Darwin’s has two sides: one is a coffee-shop-cum-cafe, where you can get a hot drink and a pastry and take them to go, or settle down at one of the small square tables. The other, with a punched-tin ceiling painted red, is a sandwich-shop-cum-mini-market, where you can buy fruit, veggies, beer or even day-old breads while waiting for your order.

Behind the counter, a line of cheery, flannel-clad hipsters dance around each other, chopping and slicing ingredients and assembling sandwiches, most of which are named after nearby streets or Harvard campus buildings. As you move up the line, you have a clear view of a pastry case filled with tempting cookies and other treats.

My favorite sandwich so far is the Longfellow, which involves ham and cheese, sliced green apple, lettuce, tomato and spicy Dijon mustard. It’s delicious, even if the ingredients tend to escape from the bread after a few bites. But mostly I love the funky local vibe, the friendly staff, and the cafe walls painted the colors of a Texas sunset.

When I forget to bring my lunch (or we’re out of leftovers), you can often find me here, alternately reading my book and people-watching as I savor my sandwich and a cookie.

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Exploring Cambridge

Thanks to the bike I venture a bit farther afield each day, so that I am beginning to feel I own this place, with its narrow twisty streets and forests of chimney pots. I seem to find a fascinating little shop round every new corner. I gaze at knitting wools, and jumpers, and cookware, but I spend my pocket money in the secondhand bookshops. I love the dry, musty smell of the volumes, the tissue-thin feel of the paper. Even the typefaces speak of vanished elegance. Already the books are accumulating in my room, and nothing, I think, makes a place more like home. In the evenings I curl up in my window seat and look out over the rooftops as the light fades. Sometimes I read, sometimes I just hold a book, and I feel the strongest sense of contented elation.

—Deborah Crombie, Dreaming of the Bones

Although the narrator of this passage is speaking about Cambridge, England, this passage captures perfectly how I feel about Oxford (pictured above). As I adjust to working in Harvard Square (in Cambridge, Massachusetts), the first few lines also express my fascination with my new neighborhood.

I don’t have a bike, as I did in Oxford. Instead I ride the subway to Harvard Square and walk the short distance to my new workplace. On my lunch breaks, as I did downtown, I am exploring these narrow twisty streets on foot, gazing at shop windows or curling up in cafes for cups of tea and squares of dark chocolate. (Dado Tea, a block from my office, is already a favorite.)

I am listening, observing, absorbing the beat and rhythm of life on the Square. And I, too, feel a strong sense of contented elation.

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A new neighborhood

For almost exactly two years, I have worked in downtown Boston, across from the two green spaces that are the beating heart of this city. I climb up out of the subway station in the morning to the tune of the church bells at Park Street (if I time it just right), and I walk across the Common with a mixture of students, dog walkers, businesspeople, morning runners, even homeless people. I watch the trees bud and bloom and leaf out, and in the fall I pick up red leaves and put them in my pocket, and take photos of the glorious spread of color.

I spend many of my lunch breaks roaming the Public Garden, smiling at the ducklings (both the statuary and live versions), or browsing the indoor shelves and outdoor carts at Brattle Book Shop. I have a bank branch, a post office, a favorite Starbucks, a favorite local coffee shop. I can direct you to three used bookstores, several consignment shops, a dozen cafes. When it’s warm outside, I walk down to the farmer’s market every Tuesday and most Fridays.

Next week, though, I’m trading all that for a new neighborhood, when I start a new job at Harvard.

Instead of getting off the Red Line as it rumbles under the Common, I’ll ride it across the river, to the beating heart of Harvard Square. I’ll trade the Common and the Public Garden for Harvard Yard and Cambridge Common. I’ll walk down Brattle Street every morning instead of Boylston Street, pop into Tealuxe for a cuppa instead of Thinking Cup, eat tomato soup at Crema Cafe instead of Panera. The Harvard Book Store and the Grolier Poetry Book Shop will stand in for the Brattle and Commonwealth Books.

As a newcomer to Boston, I’ve been thrilled by the chance to work down here in the heart of it all, to learn the rhythms of this new city by spending my days in its very center. But I’m also excited to be learning a new neighborhood, absorbing a different vibe. Harvard Square and I are already acquaintances, but we’re going to be good friends.

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Cambridge haunts: Porter Square Books

I have an on-again, off-again relationship with Cambridge. I love exploring its museums, shops and cafes, but I don’t make it over there on anything resembling a regular basis. And when I do, I frequently hop off the Red Line at Harvard Square, to meet friends or attend a reading at the Harvard Book Store. I don’t often make it all the way out to Porter Square.

But if I do, I am treated to that rare thing: a local, quirky, independent bookstore, hidden in the middle of a shopping center and bursting with bookish delights.

I love the whimsical signage, the creative table displays, the wide selection of books in many genres, the laid-back atmosphere. I could browse for hours.

Not every good bookshop has a cafe, but this one has Cafe Zing:

(I love hand-drawn chalkboard menus. Always takes me back to my barista-college-student days at the Ground Floor.)

The last time I visited, as I waited for my husband to join me for Siobhan Fallon’s thoughtful reading, I ordered a chai latte and a raspberry crumble bar:

Tasty treats and delicious books. What a delectable combination.

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Cambridge haunts: Crema Cafe

I’m clearly in a Cambridge phase right now, as evidenced by my recent adventures there: brunch in Central Square and a wonderful book event at Porter Square Books. And thanks to a stellar event lineup at the Harvard Book Store, I’ve found myself in Harvard Square several times lately.

I nearly always arrive hungry, with a bit of time to kill between my arrival and the book event. So I wind my way down Brattle Street and end up at Crema Cafe for a snack and a hot drink.

A heart in my hot chocolate

It’s often crowded at the end of the workday, but if you can snag a table, it’s a cozy atmosphere with funky music, yummy soups and quiche, and whimsical designs in the foam on top of your cocoa (or latte).

There’s nothing I love more than a neighborhood coffee shop where I can curl up, sip something delicious, and read or write or people-watch as I please. (Or, as on a recent afternoon, exchange chitchat with the barista about Les Miserables after he calls out an order for “Cosette.”)

Where do you go for a yummy, light dinner and a warm, comforting (or cool, refreshing) drink?

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Cambridge haunts: Cafe Luna

On a recent sunny Saturday, J and I found ourselves with a few free hours, after I’d run a few errands and before we had to start cooking enchiladas for a fellow transplanted Texan. I’d heard rumors of the goodness of Toscanini’s ice cream near Central Square, so we hopped on the Red Line and rode over the river, admiring the sailboats bobbing on the sparkling water.

We strolled around Central Square for a while, dropping into Rodney’s Bookstore (where I found another Miss Read book to add to my growing collection), exploring the scientific, eclectic MIT Museum (which had exhibits ranging from Himalayan glaciers to slide rules to perpetual motion sculptures). And we did visit Toscanini’s, savoring our ice cream under a burgundy umbrella.

But the surprise hit of the day was Cafe Luna, where we intended to drop in for lunch but ended up eating brunch. Because when the brunch specials menu includes an omelet featuring roasted sweet potatoes and goat cheese, and fluffy lemon-ricotta pancakes with fresh raspberries and whipped cream?

You have brunch.

Even better, we scored a table in the (open) front window, where the sunshine spilled in as we doodled on the paper tablecloth with crayons, savored warm biscuits spread with whipped honey and then dug into our entrees.

Mmmm. Delectable. We will so be going back.

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boston haunts: mount auburn cemetery

I’ve always been intrigued by old cemeteries – gently winding paths curving between mossy gravestones, with dates and epitaphs etched into limestone or granite or, in some cases, marble. (My sister is totally creeped out by this interest of mine, though she says when she does finally visit us in Boston, she wouldn’t mind seeing where Paul Revere, John Hancock and other notables are buried.)

Maybe it’s because I’ve spent time in the UK, where cemeteries tend to be older – but I find them peaceful, often beautiful, and less sterile and grim than modern cemeteries. With so much life bursting out all around the graves, it seems less possible for death to have the last word.

We’ve been intending to go out to Mt. Auburn Cemetery, in Cambridge, for months, and finally got the chance over Labor Day weekend, when some out-of-town friends wanted to see it. Five of us spent an afternoon wandering among the stones, pausing to read the occasional epitaph, comment on the unusual names or the too-close-together dates of birth and death, or gaze at the ancient trees and rippling ponds.

We missed seeing Longfellow’s grave, somehow, but we did find the Mary Baker Eddy memorial, and lots of other folks unknown to us. And the afternoon light, filtering through those green leaves, was lovely:

This all reminded me of St. John’s graveyard in Kingsport, Nova Scotia, which quickly becomes a favorite haunt of Anne Shirley’s during her college years at Redmond. The description of St. John’s by Anne’s friend Priscilla, barring the Crimean War monument, could just as easily be of Mount Auburn:

Old St. John’s is a darling place. It’s been a graveyard so long that it’s ceased to be one and has become one of the sights of Kingsport. I was all through it yesterday for a pleasure exertion. There’s a big stone wall and a row of enormous trees all around it, and rows of trees all through it, and the queerest old tombstones, with the queerest and quaintest inscriptions. You’ll go there to study, Anne, see if you don’t. Of course, nobody is ever buried there now. But a few years ago they put up a beautiful monument to the memory of Nova Scotian soldiers who fell in the Crimean War. It is just opposite the entrance gates and there’s ’scope for imagination’ in it, as you used to say.

There’s plenty of scope for imagination at Mt. Auburn – and there’s a tower you can climb up in, with (I’m told) a stunning view of eastern Massachusetts. And in just a few weeks, the leaves will be turning. I’ll definitely be going back.

What do you think of old cemeteries – creepy or contemplative?

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an evening with Maisie

When Book Club Girl announced her read-along of the Maisie Dobbs series back in December, I was intrigued. Usually I’ve at least heard of popular series even if I haven’t read them, but somehow Maisie and her creator, Jacqueline Winspear, had escaped my notice. I found the first book in the series at the Brattle, took it as a sign and bought it – and well, I was hooked. You might say I’m “mad for Maisie.”

I’ve spent a good part of this winter following Maisie’s adventures around 1920s/1930s London, with frequent trips to Kent and occasional ventures to France and other locales. She’s a psychologist and private investigator, and she is smart, strong, independent and determined – one of a generation of women who survived the Great War and then built their own lives in new and unexpected ways.

The books are full of fascinating period detail, from clothes to accents to social mores, and the supporting cast of characters is rich and compelling. (I especially love Billy Beale, Maisie’s cheerful Cockney assistant; Frankie Dobbs, her steadfast, loving father; and Priscilla, her socialite college chum who has her own demons to fight.) As much historical fiction as mystery, these books are filling an important gap for me; I hadn’t read much fiction about World War I and its aftermath until lately. (Except Rilla of Ingleside, which has done more for my understanding of the Great War than any other book, fiction or nonfiction.)

Jacqueline Winspear came recently to the Harvard Book Store to read from the latest Maisie adventure, A Lesson in Secrets. I talked my sweet husband into coming straight from work on a Friday night to hear an author whose books he hasn’t read, and bless him, he agreed, and even enjoyed himself. As for me? I was in heaven.

Like any author worth her salt, Ms. Winspear didn’t give away the plot of her new book – fortunately for me, since I hadn’t yet read it. Instead, she talked about a few of the threads weaving through the whole series, including the legacy of the Great War in England, the shifting social mores of the time, a bit of family history (her grandparents bore scars, physical and otherwise, from the war), and her own interest in secrets and mysteries. And then, in her clear, pleasant English accent, she read us a brief passage from A Lesson in Secrets. I was spellbound. I wish I could have written down every word.

I did speak with her briefly afterward, feeling tongue-tied (as I always do when I meet authors I admire), but managing to tell her I love her work, and mention my time in Oxford, as she signed a couple of books for me and one for a friend. And I didn’t tell her this, but it’s true: next time she’s on a Maisie tour, I hope she comes back this way.

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boston haunts: tealuxe

Jeremiah and I discovered Tealuxe by mistake recently, while strolling around the Harvard Square area. Their banners advertising 7 kinds of chai and more than 80 tea varieties (!) caught our eye (our eyes?), so we decided to check it out. And oh my, I am in love. (We went back this weekend for another visit, while checking out the Head of the Charles regatta – and it’s just as good the second time around.)

Behind the counter are dozens of bins full of teas:

And they have loads of wonderful tea accessories for sale (and oh, how I love that clock!):

On both of my visits I’ve had “chai-der,” which is – yes – apple cider combined with chai. Delicious – spicy and warm and perfectly autumnal.

I wish it were closer to Quincy; I’d visit more often. But we can go back, of course, and bring tea-loving friends when they come visit. I agree with the quote from Sir Arthur someone-or-other painted on the back wall (I didn’t get a good photo): “Where there is tea, there is hope.”

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