Excursion to Salem

Alla and I decided to go up to Salem to spend an afternoon at the Peabody Essex Museum and generally act like tourists. We took the train up there, lingered over lunch, and then discovered that the museum closed earlier than we thought, so we had 90 minutes to stay. We made the most of it. In that short interval, we visited three exhibits and felt like we’d already made our trip worthwhile. Since we didn’t know anywhere in particular to eat dinner nearby, we decided to take an early train back home and eat in Boston’s North End neighborhood.

We didn’t make it home right away, however, because I found a nice new iPhone on the sidewalk. I got the impression it might belong to the car parked beside it with a significant amount of cash spilling out of the ash tray. I figured anybody casual enough to leave a bunch of money in plain view might be scatterbrained enough to get out of the car with a phone in his or her lap. Conveniently, the screen wasn’t locked on the phone so I started calling the most-recently-dialed numbers in the call log. I learned the phone owner’s name and that she had come to Massachusetts with her boyfriend. I also learned the boyfriend’s name and phone number, so I tried a few times to call him. Most of the numbers I called, including the boyfriend, went unanswered. Perhaps everybody was in one place, maybe even at the wedding in the hotel across the street.

We went into the hotel to look for a scatter-brained phone dropper. Could it have been the couple making out on the sofa in the lobby? I didn’t want to interrupt them in order to find out, so I called the boyfriend’s phone again and left him a message explaining that I’d leave the phone at the front desk of the hotel.

The whole procedure took long enough that we missed our train, so we went out and found a nice-looking Indian restaurant for dinner. That worked out VERY well, since we loved our dinner and managed to coordinate our timing so that we could catch the last ferry from Salem back to Boston. We liked the boat a lot more than the train, though we do like the train too. Anyway, we had a really good time in Salem and we heard from the boyfriend as we sailed home: they got the phone and we got the improved evening.