Saturday was a busy mommy day. Chloe to the doctor's office for a quick weigh-in (11 pounds, 7 oz), late breakfast at Taste of Thyme, and then off to the mall to get new cell phones since my husband's got soaked on the job last week. The Red Sox were in town for a 7pm game and he desparately needed a new phone so he could meetup with his friend and they could catch the ferry into the city. All he knew was that the only shot they had to get to the game in time was the 4pm departure.
After 45 minutes at a cell phone kiosk going through the rigamarole of setting up two new cell phones, my mind was a bit numb but I knew that we would be lucky to pick up the friend in Salem and find the ferry landing in time for them to be off. Finally got on the road at 3:30 to go back into Salem, quick stop at the house, swung around to Big Sammy's Roast Beef (surprise! It was "Big Fred's for decades but it's under new management now), grabbed the friend and set off in search of the ferry landing.
All I knew was that it was somewhere down off of Derby St. I had seen the location on Google Maps and I had seen a few small tasteful signs around town, but having never been to Blaney St. before, I was traveling down Derby in the hopes of finding something like an obvious ferry landing, i.e. something like a big dock with a large ship that said "FERRY". We drove past the House of Seven Gables, then past a couple of tiny side streets. The street was becoming narrower and narrower. Finally we saw a small sign saying, "Salem Ferry" with an arrow pointing to the right and turned to follow it.
Suddenly, we seemed to be driving straight into the water. "Do they want us to friggin' SWIM to the boat?" my husband asked. I saw a small band of people wandering somewhere to my left and turned the car to follow them, hoping they were heading for the ferry and they had a better idea of where it was than we did. We followed them into a haphazard looking parking lot, bordered by a rusty half swung open gate and there it was. Eureka. Our friend put it best; "Jesus, you would really have to know your way around to find this thing." Luckily we had found it in time and they were off. I was back to the mall, now in the beginning of a low blood sugar meltdown, with a screaming baby in the back seat, going back to pick up the photo ID I left behind and ask about something called a sim chip that didn't seem to be working in one of the phones.
8 hours later my husband was back from the game. "How was the ferry?" I asked. "Awesome" he said, "You can drink beer and check out the planes coming into Logan."
We'll try it again and maybe take the baby in for a festival in the North End. I went to the official web site and it's a little shakey, but you can get most of the important info here. It's strange that it's tucked away so far down Derby St., but at least that should keep it from getting as crowded as the commuter rail.
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