This statue, “Casting Bread Upon the Waters,” is located in Boston’s Public Gardens and is part of the George Robert White Memorial, created in memory of an early-20th century local philanthropist. It was sculpted by Daniel Chester French, who also created the Abraham Lincoln statue at the Lincoln Memorial. Both memorials were architected by Henry Bacon. (The duo were frequent collaborators who worked together on a number of well-known projects, including my local Dupont Circle fountain.)

Rudi and I headed north for a long weekend to catch Paul Simon on his final tour, Homeward Bound, up in Boston. He played many of our favorites and songs that spanned nearly his entire career, from his Simon & Garfunkel days to his most recent album.

For the first few songs, Paul’s voice was a little wavery and I wondered if that was to emphasize that it was time to hang up his touring hat. I was a little sad for that because my favorite, “American Tune,” was the lead-off song.

I’ve seen Paul a bunch of times over the years, and, all signs to the contrary, he’s not usually my favorite performer. He tends to be a little tight and a little terse and would prefer to let his music do the talking for him. But this time, either because he’s actually enjoying himself or because he’s relieved his touring days are nearly behind him, he seemed looser and to truly be enjoying himself. He told stories, he mused about some random thoughts he was having while performing, he danced…

His band includes a sextet, yMusic, who were phenomenal. The songs they were featured on don’t seem to have been uploaded from Boston, but this is from the Vancouver, B.C., from earlier in the tour:

I was able to capture a shot of the photo that Paul said inspired “René and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War,” which he called a surrealist song for a surrealist painter:

And this is from the Hollywood Bowl:

He also played some of his more popular songs, such as “Homeward Bound”:

“You Can Call Me Al”:

“Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard”:

And “The Boxer”:

It was a great show and one that I am so glad we traveled to see. If you’ve been thinking about catching Paul on his final tour, I’d say it’s definitely worth the splurge.

Can you guess where we were yesterday?

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday invites us to consider our favorite books that inspire a love of travel:

1. Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence: Our trip to France took us to Provence — Aix and Avignon — in large part because of this book and how much it made me laugh.
2. L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables: One of these days I’m going to Prince Edward Island and it will be largely because of this series (and the charm of raidergirl3, of course).
3. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett: Similarly, I long to see the moors of Yorkshire simply because of this book.
4. Heidi Heilig’s The Girl from Everywhere: It didn’t kindle an interest in seeing Hawaii (that would be Buffy Saint Marie’s appearances on Sesame Street when I was a kid), but it underscored it.
5. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares: I can’t remember everywhere they went, but the Greek islands stand out (and then was reinforced by the film adaptation).
6. Gayle Forman’s Just One Day: That whole bop around Europe thing is so appealing.
7. Maureen Johnson’s 13 Little Blue Envelopes: Ditto.
8. Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins: It might be the romance, but boarding school in Paris has never sounded so good.
9. The Magician by Michael Scott: In the second book of The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series, they end up in Paris in the catacombs, which sounds really cool, particularly if you don’t encounter monsters in them.
10. Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods: Hiking does not especially appeal to me, but Bryson mixes history, humor, and hubris so well in his works — but particularly this one about the Appalachian Trail — that it nearly makes want reconsider. (But not quite.)

There are others of course (Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books and the Great Plain states, for instance), but these were the first ten I thought of. How about you? Have you read books that particularly made you want to travel?

Some of the best parts of traveling are the meals you get to have. Here are some of the places we ate last week while in New York City:

You’ve already seen this shot of us on the roof deck of Ample Hills Creamery in Brooklyn, just down the street from our hotel. It’s really lucky that their hours only worked with our schedule one day out of the three. My cone was Snap Mallow Pop (a deconstructed Rice Krispie treat) and Nonna D’s Oatmeal Lace (a brown sugar ice cream with oatmeal lace cookies in it). Rudi opted for double chocolate and fresh strawberry.

Between visiting Prospect Park and having supper at a burger joint, we stopped at The Kings Beer Hall, a beer garden we were walking past after finding an open bike dock for Rudi’s bike (I totally dock blocked him and another girl). We were their last outdoor customers of the day, and really enjoyed the gigantic pretzel (served on a baking sheet) that came out of the oven after I took this shot. They also had a pinball machine inside, which made us both really happy.

Wednesday morning, we went to Runner & Stone, a bakery just around the corner from our hotel that Rudi had discovered on a trip to the City in December. This is one of the best chocolate almond croissants I’ve ever had. We came back on our final morning as well, and had peach tarts.

We headed into Manhattan for the play, but had left enough time to stop at the Greenmarket at Union Square for lunch. We wandered around, sampling jams, cheese, and alcohol; purchased some grains to bring home; and built ourselves a picnic lunch of baguette and peppercorn chèvre, strawberries, drinkable yogurt, chocolate milk, cider doughnuts, and potato chips (which we didn’t end up eating there after all).

I have no picture of the rather mediocre pizza we got down in Hells Kitchen between parts 1 and 2 of the show, but we got to eat it outside on the High Line with a view of the Hudson.

On Thursday after checking out of our hotel, Rudi wanted to go to a bike shop a couple blocks away and see if they had pads for his helmet and I found a couple bookstores nearby, so we parted ways. After checking out one of them, I turned up the hill to find this sight:

This is the Brooklyn outpost of Doughnut Plant, an independent doughnut shop. Check out the mosaics that make up their seating! I bought several doughnuts, some of which we ate that day and some of which we ate after we got home. I think the highlight was the coconut cream, made each day from fresh coconuts, but Rudi may have a different opinion.

After Rudi and I met up again, we walked over to the other bookstore, pausing at NuNu Chocolates, when the wafting chocolate scent pulled me in off the street.

We ended our trip with lunch at Sky Ice, a Thai restaurant that serves food from a variety of regions of Thailand. I had the lunch special and Rudi had a northern Thai curry. It was all so filling (and we were running later than we’d hoped for our bus home), that we nearly turned down the scoop of ice cream that came with my lunch. But we took it to go and finished it on the way back to grab our luggage and hit the subway.

It was a delicious trip. Good thing we got so much walking in!

Rudi and I took a few days off to travel to New York City this week, and today we saw both parts of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

I will not ruin anything by giving away spoilers, but rest assured that the play was enjoyed both by the person who’d read the working script (me) and the one who went in knowing nothing. If you’ve been thinking about seeing it and wondering if it was worth it, it is. I highly recommend it and will be eager to see how it does at the upcoming Tony Awards. I suspect it will do well, particularly for the technical awards.