I grew up in Charlestown, Massachusetts, and my family still lives there. I live in the Seaport now, which is still really close. I love living over there. It's super convenient getting to practice and to games and it seems like there's a new building popping up there every few weeks or so.
It's nice because on days off or on Sunday, I get to go home and see my family. During Christmas break, I can see my extended family and not have to travel. It definitely has a lot of benefits to it, for sure.
I'm super proud of where I grew up. I grew up with a lot of people who've positively influenced me to get into sports as a young kid -- not just hockey -- but all over. I think Boston is kind of known as a blue-collar town, but you get what you work for. I try to adopt that mentality into my playing career now and I think growing up here has a lot to do with that.
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If you're from out of town, the North End is a lot of people's favorite spot. Some of the best Italian food around. There are five restaurants on every single street, all packed on top of each other. Monica's is a lot of guys' favorite spot. We know the guys over there and they always treat us extremely well. The food's amazing, of course. But it's tough to go wrong. I don't think I've ever had a bad meal over there.
Charlestown has a lot of cool new restaurants. Since I grew up, it's changed a lot. We have four or five guys now living there full-time. I feel like it's an up-and-coming town. The only real restaurant when I was growing up was the 99. And I still love that. Now there's Waverly Kitchen & Bar and Monument Restaurant & Tavern. Those are the two new spots. That's where I would go now, for sure. But literally the 99 and Papa Gino's was what I grew up with. There was a Friendly's, too. That was it.
Where I am in the Seaport, they just opened up a new place called Mooo …. There's one in Beacon Hill too. Really good. I would say that's the best steak in Boston.
For what to do, in the winter right now, there's the Holiday Market at Snowport in the Seaport. It doesn't look that big from the outside, but then you go in and somehow they've jammed in like 50 stores. They're all really small but there's a lot of good stuff in there. I have a new puppy at home, so I like to wheel him over there. But especially before Christmas there's a lot of traffic and he's a very friendly dog, so getting in and out of there takes an hour to an hour and a half.
I'm pretty decently into fashion, so I like going to shop. I hate doing it online because I feel like you never know until you see it in person or feel a certain fabric. Especially when I was younger in my rookie year, that's how I would spend my time, just meet people outside of hockey and dive into that world a little bit. I love Newbury Street, but I think the smaller places are cool. There's one store there called Riccardi, they have some pretty high-end stuff. It's just fun, even if I don't shop, just to kill a few hours, I just go and chat with the guy whose family owns it. We went to the same prep school, at Belmont Hill. I didn't know him before, but I got to know him over the last couple of years. My "Pasta hat" came from there, it's the only "Pasta hat" I have. I'm not trying to compete with David Pastrnak at all on that. He's got like 17 of them. At least. It kind of seems like never wears the same one twice.
Other than that, a popular thing to do is a Duck Tour. I feel like that's something that sticks out when you think about Boston because the vehicles go on land and on water and you can hear about the history of Boston, though I've actually never had the opportunity to do that. Or obviously I'm biased because of hockey but skating on Frog Pond at Boston Common is great too. That's what I always recommend to people to do when they're here.
