Lazy Monday

It's been a pleasant long weekend. The weather has been decent for February, though being a lifelong New Englander, I'm not foolish enough to think there isn't going to be any more snow, but at least the bits that are still on the ground have half a chance to finish melting before we get any more.

Anyway, Friday was the 15th anniversary of our first date (in case anyone's wondering, we saw Six Degrees of Separation at the West Newton Cinema, and went for ice cream afterward). Over the years we have treated this as a sort of half-anniversary, so with that in mind I wanted to make it fun and a little more elaborate than usual.

We decided a couple of weeks ago that we would have dinner at Turner's Seafood Grill in Melrose. We've been there one or two times before, and have found the food excellent. I would say it's as good as any seafood place in Boston, and the prices, while not cheap, are comparatively lower. And by going out on the 13th, we avoid the Valentine's Day madness.

I thought that after dinner, it would be nice to spend the night in a hotel. My first thought was to go to Hotwire and find the best deal I could on the fanciest hotel, and I did find a very good rate at what I suspect was the Langham in Post Office Square (when you book on Hotwire, you don't find out the exact property you're staying at until after you pay for the booking, which is part of how they can offer the rates they do).

Now, I have a fascination with hotels that the Mrs. doesn't particularly share. While I didn't think she would not enjoy the place, I know her well enough by now to know she cares more about overall comfort than putative luxury, and I figured her response to a night downtown would be something along the lines of "so where are we going to park?" So I decided to change my approach. I remembered reading last summer about the Aloft hotel opening in Lexington. Aloft is being marketed as a sub-brand of W Hotels, with the intent of providing a boutique hotel atmosphere at a lower rate. I had a look at the site and thought it would be just right. (We'll do the luxe hotel thing another time.)

We stayed in a W once several years ago, so we could see some definite similarities in the room design. The materials and colors are more distinctive than what you find in a typical hotel room. The Aloft rooms have platform beds with down comforters, and the beds face the windows rather than one of the side walls. There's a nice big flat TV on the wall between the windows, and a frosted glass panel next to the bed that lets natural light into the shower stall, which, along with the rest of the bathroom, is on the other side of the wall behind the bed. Cute, a little funky, and comfortable.

We had a friend look after the dog so we could take our time getting home on Saturday morning. I had also ordered Valentine's Day candy from See's, a California company whose stuff the Mrs. grew up with and loves. When the package arrived on Thursday it seemed a little light, and indeed when I opened it one of the items was missing. They sent out a replacement and it arrived today (apparently, UPS doesn't care that it's a holiday).

As for the rest of the weekend, we did a couple of errands, saw Slumdog Millionaire last night, and had a very late breakfast today. The movie was excellent; as the Mrs. put it, "some fascinating storytelling, but also depressing enough that I don't want to see it again."