Alright, Boston, I’m sold. Though your humidity gives me an unbecoming bouffant hairdo, I’m gunning for a more permanent return to your city limits. I like to think I got a glimpse into my future life, law school and beyond, and it incorporated all of my favorite things.

Becky picked me up from the airport on Friday night and asked if I would mind attending her non-profit’s 15^th anniversary party. Though she assured me that it was perfectly okay for me to sit home and watch TV, I was vehemently opposed to missing out on the chance to make small-talk with awkwardly skinny men in used women’s cardigans and ironic tee shirts who have forsaken material goods in the name of schooling the youth of America. After a primer on the lingo of the program, I was ready to go, and I found myself flaunting a nametag in a room full of inner-city schoolteachers sipping Sam Adams and Yellow Tail.

All of my conversations went something like this:

“Hi, I’m Laura.”

“Hi, I’m —, what do you do here?”

“I’m a friend of the organization.” (I hoped they then assumed by “friend” I meant “wealthy donor”) “Yourself?”

“I’m a CT at the NSA in the MVMPBQ.”

(Nodding my head and smiling) “Very cool!”

(Sip beers. Eat food. Move away in silence.)

After I’d had a small talk conversation with every single person there (which didn’t take very long given my complete and utter lack of knowledge about educating), I crept down the stairs and stood awkwardly in front of the band, singing along vaguely to Motown hits performed by a large woman clad in a vest and poorly fitted black pants. It was vaguely reminiscent of my 8^th grade social circuit, which included a lot of bar/bat mitzvahs, except that there was alcohol instead of Hawaiian Punch (a welcome substitution). Becky was an excellent hostess, however, and upon the arrival of Ben via train from New York, we found ourselves out with a group of program alums hitting the Cantab, a delightful bar in Cambridge with another (remarkably similar) cover band and abundant whiskey ginger ales.

It was here that I noticed the sizeable population of highly desirable men for the first time. The crowd was very much in my favor: tall, dark hair, glasses, and that disheveled look that I associate with the intelligent grad student who has no time to think about fashion. It was literally about 27 seconds before I was engaged in conversation with a young man of my physical liking about insurgency politics in Burma, and then the musical genius and influence of Leonard Cohen and Daniel Johnson, and then the weirdest foods we’d ever eaten in the weirdest countries we’d ever visited. Hooray for the nerd heyday. Sold.

Saturday morning found our dynamic trio covering important pre-wine festival bases at Darwin’s, a coffee shop I plan to frequent with aggressive zeal until the staff knows me and starts giving me my coffee refills for free. I like few things better than perfectly yolky over-easy eggs, bacon, and croissants, but the happy combination of those three foods and the addition of avocado and cheese in breakfast sandwich form is nothing short of blissful. The yolk of my egg spilled pleasantly over the rest of the ingredients creating a well-textured and properly-flavored meal perfect for engaging the palate and preparing the body and soul for excessive consumption. Practically religious.

Then it was onto the trip’s original purpose. The Boston Wine Expo is the largest wine expo on the East Coast. Producers, distributors, and importers pack into the Seaport Center with their line-up, and the public descends, cattle style, upon the goods. Last year, Ben’s and my strategy was similar to my strategy at an open bar at a wedding: maybe move from white to red, but generally just get drunk. Quickly. This year, the first two hours found Ben spitting (I know, what?) and me waxing poetic on the 10% of wines I wanted to try like some insufferable snob. The brunt of this was on Jeff and Haley, who’d joined us from DC and had the unfortunate timing of arriving about half an hour later than us, when I was just tipsy enough to unabashedly share my “knowledge:” “You MUST try the German rieslings. They’ve REALLY brought some pretty stuff.” I would have punched me in the face, too.

Admittedly, the highlight of the Boston Wine Expo was seeing the woman Ben and I nicknamed the Chateauneuf Lady. Last year, after consuming a lot of other wine, Ben and I posted up at the Chateauneuf-du-Pape (henceforth CDP) table and talked for an hour to an adorable tiny woman from New Jersey who happened to be married to Alain Juguenet, the man arguably responsible for the enjoyable CDP trend currently taking the United States of America by storm. Obviously, we didn’t know that then and so were THOSE patrons, commanding attention from the entire Juguenet family until well after the show ended and they finally agreed to meet us across the street for a drink in order to get rid of us.

Since that experience, Ben and I had talked extensively of the legendary Chateauneuf Lady, proudly bearing the CDP temporary tattoos she’d given us on visible elements of our bodies at other wine expos. So when the entire family recognized us, it would be an understatement to merely say that we were pleased. They even remembered what we’d been up to, asking us questions about the wine technology application I was creating (woops) and our sommelier certifications. I flirted my face off with both the son (tall with dark hair… I can’t help it) and the Chateauneuf Lady in hopes that they’d ask me to join their family through either matrimony or servitude. Being much less drunk allowed for recognition of the moment when the social interaction was appropriately over, and we bid our mature adieus, ready to hit the North End for a plate of messy pasta.

The North End is a mass of winding cobblestone streets lined with Italian restaurants, pastry shops, and ice creameries. As much as I like all of those things, the neighborhood stresses me out. The abundance of choice is overwhelming, and the knowledge that the best Italian food in the city might very well be around the next corner is cataclysmically stressful. Normally, I’m equipped for this problem, armed with sound advice or a Zagat guide, but I was unprepared this time. When that happens, I end up stomping from restaurant to restaurant, halfheartedly reading menus and trying to determine whether one place is better than another. Toss in the hour and a half wait at any place worth patronizing and the politics of a party of 7 and the probability of satisfaction with the ultimate choice is frustratingly low. We settled on an upstairs table at a fairly generic spot and got what we deserved for our lack of patience: mediocrity.

Naturally, we merely drowned our sorrows in ice cream, and then Becky, Ben, and I headed back to Cambridge for Atwood’s, a bar that will likely become a staple of my social life. The extensive and delightful selection of beers on tap and the live music invited the three of us to throw the deep switch, riled up about politics and save-the-world complexes and Washington and the economy, and we leaned on the mahogany bar for about three hours, nursing IPAs and getting more passionate with each passing moment while an eclectic blues group sang off key and banged away on a two-string bass that resembled a ukulele.

Sunday was campus visit day, so after another breakfast sandwich at Darwin’s, Ben and I began our epic trek through the city of Boston, armed with just our conversational spirit and handheld devices to conquer Harvard, MIT, and Boston University.

I’ve got to admit, I’m at least a tiny bit remorseful that I popped off to Harvard and effectively eliminated my chances of attending. I’d visited the campus before, but I’d forgotten exactly the feeling of superior delight the colonial brick buildings and tree-lined grounds elicit. Most unfortunately, I could picture myself backpack-laden and heading to class, basking in the glow of America’s favorite ivory tower. MIT was a different story. An hour walk along the Charles later, we were surrounded by engineers and people doing science and 60’s and 70’s architecture reminiscent of the Soviet era. Not my fancy (sorry, engineers).

Over on the Boston side of the river, we wandered through Beacon Hill and brownstone-lined streets en route to the BU campus, which is a long stretch along Commonwealth Ave. We opted to eat lunch at Victoria’s Seafood, a Chinese restaurant with colorful tropical drinks posters in the windows. I like a little sketchiness in a Chinese restaurant, and this covered that base just fine. We really rolled the dice by ordering the lobster, however, and I spent the rest of the night wondering when my comeuppance was going to begin (luckily, it never happened).

Ben had to return to New York after that, and I wandered over to Brookline for a reunion with the one and only Robert (Roberto, for those of you who have followed my adventures since the original Argentina tour). We quickly picked up where we left off about 5 years ago: platonically cuddling in his bed with witty one-liners, tales of recent dating faux pas, and brutal analysis of the attractiveness of a slew of males on our favorite online dating site.

Robert’s always good for a good honest sketch of every neighborhood in the area, so we hit the streets to see what I’d experience if I opted to live in Brookline like a good BU grad student: “Here’s the Jewish pastry shop, and in case you didn’t fulfill all of your Jewish pastry needs there, there’s another right across the street. Kosher Chinese food you say? Fear not. It’s there. In case you need shoes when you move to Boston, here’s a store for that. And yes, they sell them in size ski, too!”

Feasting on Pho and ice cream gave us time to catch up. I regaled him with my recent run-in with a strategy-focused Scrabble-player during a date (at which Robert scoffed, “Oh, please. Two-letter words? Those little tiles are merely a vehicle for me to demonstrate my intellectual supremacy.”). He one-upped me with a tale about a date who had a well-disguised prosthetic leg, the surprising discovery of which rendered understandable inequitable uneasiness.

I was sad to leave the next morning, but relished riding the T (my friends are well-equipped with vehicles so the practice of my public transportation hobby was mostly unnecessary) and taking in the Boston business-culture scene, which is markedly less of a scene than New York.

Generally? Boston is an endlessly pleasant place filled with smart people with whom I enjoy socializing. I like the bars. I like the restaurants. I like the aesthetically pleasing neighborhoods. I like the slightly-less-aggressive-than-New-York East Coast intensity. So now I’m hoping against hope that Harvard accepts me—while getting comfortable with the idea of BU. Boston fits. Here’s hoping I’ll see you in the fall.