My first Seattle Times byline!! Boston travel package ran in Sunday's paper, and it's online here. The week we spent in Boston was the longest and fanciest vacation we've ever had together. We saw so much of this fascinating city thanks to our Boston expert, who put together a super OCD itinerary for me because I didn't have time to do it myself. We saw costumed actors on the dock of the Boston Tea Party ship, and visitors "throwing" boxes of tea overboard. And that was close enough an encounter for us (tickets for our family would have been $100). Joseph and Paul get dragged to lots of art museums. After a while, Paul politely pointed out, "We've been here a long time." (It was like 40 minutes.) The Museum of Fine Arts has a great collection of early American art, fittingly. I was super excited to see this portrait of John Adams, because we'd just seen that same red settee at his house in Quincy.   .   I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the Chinatown gate — a Taiwan flag! Most Chinatowns are filled with Cantonese speakers and kind of seedy, but I feel like I'm at home. I bought spring rolls, big buns stuffed with pork and an entire hard-boiled egg and flaky red bean cakes. No pictures because they were devoured.   . . EVERYONE we saw walking out of the North End was carrying these little white and blue boxes, so we had to go get some Mike's too. The line wound out the door and to the end of the block. The boys waited outside, and a random old guy came by and gave them a red playground ball. (We even saw a guy going through airport security with one of these little boxes. Priorities!)   Supersized cannolis of every flavor, and yummy almond Italian cookies by the pound. "Shoo-gar on top?" the lady wrapping up our order asked before generously sprinkling confection's sugar over everything. Eh, why not. When in Boston, gotta have a lobster roll, right? It was a little bit cheaper at Quincy Market, still, $17.95 each. My boys didn't want any of the lobster, took a nibble of the buttered bread, but really dug into the bag of Lay's potato chips on the side. Toscanini's ice cream is like the fancy artisanal ice cream we're spoiled with in Seattle. We got four huge scoops: matcha green tea, mango, Earl Gray and B3 (brown sugar, brown butter and brownies). I'm pretty sure I got diabetes that day. But at least I will die happy and well-fed. I asked Joseph what his favorite thing about Boston was. "Swimming at the hotel."