I often  feel like I have to fly across the country or an ocean before I am truly on a tourist vacation.  What an idiot I am.  Recently some good friends of mine wanted to get away for the weekend before summer was over in New England.  These are the friends that I have traveled to Ireland, Greece, England, and France with over the past years.  We brainstormed staying in New Hampshire at a lake or even traveling to Maine umm to do the things you do in Maine.  We kept hitting a financial wall as none of us wanted to spend money.  We did want to relax and drink wine.  Enter Salem, MA.  I lived briefly in Salem and considered it a local-schmocale town.  I lived their long enough that it didn’t phase me to get my nails done next door to the Town’s Witch’s office.  So when my friends said that they had decided that we would just spend the day shopping in Salem and see the sights I thought it would be a snooze fest.  Oh but no, they also wanted to go “sailing”. Continue reading »