Mike’s Pastry US Map & Phone & Address
300 Hanover St. Boston; (617) 742-3050
Mine can’t even think about the North End without sighing at the string of fine Italian bakeries along Hanover Street, the neighborhood’s main drag. Mike’s is his pick in the area. The store does both wholesale and retail business, and its pastry cases are filled with a colorful palette of cakes and cookies. Why, there are over a dozen varieties of cannoli alone! They also have table service, if you prefer to while an hour away over pastry and an espresso. In the summer, they add homemade ice cream. Mmmm. Open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 9 P.M. weekends til 11 P.M.
Mike’s Pastry US Map & Phone & Address Photo Gallery
About 250 metres off the rocky dolorite shoreline of the Black Skerrs, three large rocks dry to 1.2 metres at low spring tide and form mini-islets. They are surrounded by other submerged rock mounds, all covered in dense kelp and minute mussels. The seaward side of the islets is the deepest and most interesting with a number of deep overhangs and small caves, too little to enter, but often harbouring a blue creepy-crawly, even if it is usually well out of reach of the longest crab hook. On one diving trip to Holy Island, we rounded False Emmanuel Head to discover a 12-metre Berwick lobster boat stranded high and dry on top of the highest of the three islets, its bow and stern sections protruding almost two metres over the ends of the big flat rock. After our laughter had subsided we motored across to see if they needed any kind of assistance, but were greeted with an embarrassed stony silence, then a voice mumbled: We’re jus’ waitin’ fir the witter tae cum back!’ If only I had taken my camera with me: it would have been a gem of a picture. One hundred metres inshore of the three islets, which incidentally have a large resident colony of grey seals on and around them, there are a number of long low reefs with big overhangs, caves and deep crevices, many covered with soft corals. Fifty metres to the north of these is a long L- shaped reef, standing up to 4 metres high in places, and at low water the kelp over the top is visible on the surface. The surrounding seabed has large patches of sand and craggy rocks, all coated in a thick carpet of minute mussels which often attract some large plaice. Tidal streams on the flood run in an easterly direction around the long stretch of Castlehead Rocks and are quite strong on the top half of the tide.
