Miles travelled
Only 9 miles walked today – slackers.
Where we stayed
Our final night at the Revere Hotel, Boston Common, Boston, MA.
Where we ate
Starbucks again for lunch
Rustic Kitchen for dinner. This restaurant was next to/in our hotel and was perfect for this evening as we didn’t want to go too far. I had baked rigatoni which was really nice but hotter thank the sun. Husband had stuffed chicken which wasn’t great quality chicken, but he didn’t hate it. He then had pumpkin cheesecake for dessert.
Photos
Day Fourteen. Not many photos from today as it was a bit rainy.
Our day started with a very serious conversation with the server in Panera about riots and politics in Boston. We did not expect such a heavy topic over the cinnamon rolls. The main gist of his comments were that he didn’t envy us today due to 1) the Red Sox playing in the World Series that evening; 2) Obama giving a speech at Faneuil Hall; 3) possibly ‘fun’ riots later on in the day. It turns out that the last time the Red Sox won the World Series, Boston got a bit riot-y, someone died, and everyone was angry. But we were reassured that it was just rioting to celebrate so we didn’t need to be worried. Uh, ok.
Pushing all of that to the back of our minds, we walked over to Park Street to grab the MBTA over to Cambridge. It was really easy to buy a ticket ($2.50 each way) and in no time at all, we were walking out the Harvard exit and over to the Harvard Vistor’s Center. We put our names down for a tour which would be leaving in about 45 minutes, and then figured out what to do for 45 minutes in the rain which wouldn’t spoil our tour. We found some shelter, and after being asked if we studied there (YAY!), we went back to the center to start the tour.
There were about 20 people on the tour, from Ireland, Germany, Argentina, and Japan. The tour guide was in her final year studying Sociology and she was a sweetheart. She was really chatty as she walked us from building to building, giving us personal and historical stories. We wandered around the Old Yard, looked at Mass Hall, over to the Science Center, then into Memorial Hall where we listened to the din from the Freshman dining hall next door. Only Freshman are allowed in this hall to breed a sense of community amongst the new students, and not even we were allowed in to look (although that didn’t stop some people in the tour from opening the door – so rude!)
We then went over to the library (again, not allowed in) and the tour finished at the fake statue of John Harvard, also known as the statue of three lies. We really enjoyed the tour, and thanked our guide before heading off towards MIT, stopping at one of the Harvard stores to buy merchandise. We hoped to use the MIT app to look around as it had a really good walking tour, but it didn’t seem to work without 3G so instead, we wandered about a bit not knowing what we were looking at. We jumped back on the MBTA at Kendal/MIT and travelled back into Boston. We grabbed a Starbucks for a very late lunch and went back to our room for another nap after watching Obama do his talking thing across town.
Still a little bit worried about fun riots, we decided to stay close to the hotel for dinner and went next door to the Rustic Kitchen. Pretty much everyone in Boston was at home or in a bar watching the game so it was quite quiet (although the game was on in the restaurant as well) and we enjoyed a peaceful dinner.
It was the last night of our holiday, so back in our room, I had a fun game of trying to squash everything into my suitcase whilst we watched the rest of the game. It felt like the game went on forever, but the Red Sox won and we switched off the TV, trying to hear if there were riots. We figured we were far enough away from Fenway Park so we weren’t worried as we fell asleep.
untold blisses 