Beating the Patriots - Day Minus 1

There were witches - good witches and evil witches, Glinda witches and Sabrina witches, funny witches and sexy witches, young witches and older witches and a few much much older witches.  There were even a few wanna be sexy witches that looked more like Glinda's dour old maiden aunt, but with a pointy hat.  Everywhere you looked in Salem you saw witches.  Well except for where you saw ghosts, or spidermen or power rangers, or Santa Claus. (Don't ask me - if it is good enough for the department stores for them to show decorations before halloween I guess it is good enough for St. Nick to be running around as well.)  And then there were to actual witches.  Like the ones running the  "Ask a Witch Booth"  and the "Make a Wand" display.  Salem just before halloween is fun and funky, cute and spooky and just a great excuse for a party all day long and well through the night.

As you might have guessed our path took us to good old Salem.  Home of the witch trials and current habitat of more witches, psychics, mediums and the like then you can count.  It is also the home of at least 8 different witch museums and that is not counting pop up stands like the ask a witch booth.  All together a great time, wonderful people watching and lots of fun.  I highly recommend it.

We started our day at a restaurant called Dubes.   It is a small, bar like place that, surprise surprise, was well decorated for halloween.  It also had great service, friendly people, good drinks and WONDERFUL fried clams, scallops and fish.  The shrimp, good but not wonderful.  Huge portions, good prices, great food, great service and a fun atmosphere.  What else can you ask for?

After our sojourn to witch world (well salem anyway) we found out that chair wars is a real thing and lo and behold we were not far from the location of the first largest chair in America.  Now apparently this title has gone back and forth between several cities as new chairs are built, torn down and what exactly is a chair is debated.   Hey this is serious stuff.  But we needed to check out this new place so off we went to see the chair.   There is a picture of it below.  It is not quite as big as the one in North Carolina and certainly not as fancy.  And no president has ever rested his bottom on it, but it is impressive none the less.  Not sure why it is sitting in front of a school, but that is where it sits, or stands I guess.  Chairs stand and we sit - right?

After that it was getting on into the evening and we headed for 5 Corners Kitchen.  There we had some good oysters, wonderful tuna tartare, good squid ink pasta, great skate wing and finally some very nice gelato and sticky toffee pudding.  Oh, and some horrible coffee.  Oh well it was late at night and I probably shouldn't have been drinking coffee anyway.

And possibly the best thing about both of these restaurants is that I didn't feel like I was 30 years older than anyone else in the place.  What is it about trendy good restaurants that only young hipster types go there?

Tomorrow is the big day.  Game day and the last regular season away game we will be going to this year.  It promises to be a great game and I am counting on the predictions of the experts being as good as they have been so far this year.   All of the experts are picking New England to win.  Of course they are 21 - 49 for the year in picking the winners.  So given that their win percentage wouldn't even make them a top notch hitter in baseball, I am confident that they will again be proven wrong.

GO BEARS

An interesting note, we have seen no Bears fans this week.   Usually we see a large number wherever we go, but this week none.  I don't know if that means we have not been to the right places, or if we are going to be very lonely singing the fight song after each Bears score, but we will give you all the details tomorrow.