My friends Norm and Michelle and I kept trying to get to the Frog Pond for ice skating and being foiled by the few days that we actually did get winter weather this year. It turns out that the third time really was a charm! On the final night of the season, we made it! Just in time for the zamboni to head out and groom the ice while we tied (and retied) our skates and laughed about how it felt to walk in them after so many years.

Pete, despite having grown up in a state with winters worse than New England’s, has no idea how to ice skate and didn’t want to try. He went for a walk and came back just in time to laugh at us as we worked our very cautious way around the rink for the first lap.

One lap is about all it took for me to fall in love with it and regret not having taken advantage of living within walking distance of a free outdoor rink for all the time we lived in JP. By the time we were done, I had decided that next winter I need to get my own ice skates and then buy a season pass for the Frog Pond, because I could TOTALLY ice skate on my lunch breaks at work! And then drag all my friends back to skate with me on the weekends. Friends: consider yourself warned…but hey! Hot cocoa is on me.

I have been wanting to take the Art & Architecture Tour at the Boston Public Library for a long time, but hadn’t found anyone interested in doing it with me until recently. Katie saw it on my Winter To Do List and mentioned she was on board, so we finally got around to meeting up after work for the ~hour long tour (after a stop at Thinking Cup for tea/hot cocoa).

The tour guides are all volunteers, and ours was great! She certainly knew her stuff, and added to the basic information with anecdotes that were often quite funny. Our group was probably the perfect size – about 12-14 of us total – and the tour was the perfect length. I’m sure there is a lot more to the library than was covered, but any longer would have been a bit overwhelming. My favorite bits were when she talked about recent restoration to the artwork and what it entailed, and hearing about the process behind getting some of the artwork into the spaces.

I can’t recommend this tour enough…for one thing, it’s free! There’s so much to see and do in Boston that I think a lot of people miss out on smaller things like this because they aren’t as well publicized. The tour is just over an hour, and it’s smack in the heart of Back Bay – folks should be able to work it into a trip easily! In fact, I’m interested in taking the tour again if only because I’m curious to see if different tour guides offer different anecdotes.

The next time you’re at the library, for the tour or otherwise, don’t forget to pet the lion’s tail on your way past – rumor has it that stroking the tail of a lion statue will make it come to life!