Our 'hood.

Quite a few of y'all have actually visited us here (and we LOVE that!) and have seen our neighborhood. For those of you who haven't (or perhaps "haven't yet"), I thought I'd do a little picture tour of our walk to the grocery store. 

I realized that I've been a little reckless with my use of the term "neighborhood." I've been using it interchangeably for two different concepts. Allow me to explain:

Boston is divided into big neighborhoods- ever so slightly like the boroughs in New York. But not on such a huge scale. Here's the wikipedia map, if you'd like to take a look. We live in Brighton, so when we write out our return address, we can write either "Brighton" or "Boston," and they both work. Brighton is right next to Allston, and most of the time, this area is referred to as Brighton-Allston. There are a bunch of others, like Back Bay, Fenway (yes, it's a neighborhood and not just a ballpark), Jamaica Plains (locally referred to as "JP"), the North End, the South End, Downtown, Beacon Hill, East Boston. These are rather large areas within the city, not to be confused with suburbs. That's one definition of "neighborhood" around here.

The other way that I use "neighborhood" is in the more traditional sense: the area right around where we live. In a confusing turn of events, when I use "neighborhood" like this, I'm actually referring to our little corner of the Brighton neighborhood AND a nearby, separate municipality, Brookline. Within the Boston area, there are a few little pockets that are towns unto themselves...but blend in seamlessly with Boston (like Brookline and Cambridge). Brighton runs into Brookline with almost no indication that things have shifted, but Brookline has a separate government, police force, post office, etc. Again, it's not set apart like a suburb would be; it just maintains its independence from Boston. Confused? Yeah, you kind of have to see it to understand. Hotel Boswell is taking reservations, if you want to come check out the conundrum. 

Anyway, our apartment is on the side of Brighton that is right up next to Brookline, and our grocery store is inside Brookline town limits. And now, with all of that crazy background information, you can fully appreciate this guided tour of our walk to the grocery store (it's about a mile away). :)

This is the view down our street. This looks like there's a lot of parking...don't be fooled, friends.

A few streets over from ours...check out that vine-covered apartment building!

This church is right down the street from the vine-covered edifice pictured above. It's right after you cross over into Brookline. It's also on Beacon Street, which is a big thoroughfare through Boston and Brookline.

Here's the church up close. It's the Chinese Christian Church of New England, by the way.

Once you get to the intersection across from the church, turn left and head this way.

Quaint apartment fronts.

Episcopal church a little ways down.

Up close.

More apartments. I don't even want to know how much the rent is...I bet it hurts the bank account.

Beacon Street.

The apartments along this stretch of Beacon have really lovely flowers and landscaping (in the, you know, two feet patches in front of the buildings).

And, we've arrived! The store is the short building in the foreground...not to be confused with the castle-like turret in the background. REALLY don't want to know how much the rent is there.

We went home a different way (much like the Wise Men...only, in our case, we needed to go to CVS), and I snapped some shots of that part of the walk. More gorgeous apartment buildings.

This is a little hard to see because of the sun, but if you squint, you can see the train on the left side of the picture. This is Cleveland Circle, which is kind of a hub of shops and restaurants for this stretch of Beacon Street.

It's really a rather lovely walk. When it's sunny and not too hot. It wasn't quite as lovely when there was a lot of snow/ice/freezing temperatures. But, it's pretty nice these days. The not nice part is the trek home. We live on Chestnut Hill, so going TO the store isn't bad, as it's downhill. Going BACK is a different story. Not only are you headed uphill, you're now loaded down with groceries. 

Oi. Can't win 'em all. Hope you enjoyed the pictures! I'll try to do a few more walking tours for you sometime. Wouldn't that be fun?