We're backkkk....

We're back from Boston- Cathy took an 18 hour nap when we got home.

The rest of the pictures will be up by Tuesday evening- we're still sorting through the billions of pictures that we took. We had a great time!

This Just In: Descartes is a Huge Douchebag

We stopped by the Harvard University bookstore because we're nerd-tastic! :) We were pleased to see that we could wander among the textbooks and see what Harvard students are reading. Cathy was especially pleased to see a lot of used texts. She loves to see what people have written in them, and used to try to find used ones with writing when she bought books from the bookstore in college. She even has a lesson for her class where she discusses writing in books, centered around this essay.

What lofty thoughts would a Harvard student have? What brilliant gems are written in those used texts?

Cathy picked up this book...


..and flipped it open to a random page only to find...

...that Descartes is a huge douchebag. (click picture for larger image.)

There you have it. Straight from Harvard to the travel blog! Now you know.

Monday Part II: Harvard Museum of Science

The Harvard Museum of Science was really interesting, and much bigger than we expected. We ended up splitting up, so our pictures are kind of random.

This was a part of their collection of rocks. They were very pretty!

These are hummingbirds from the bird room. The bird room freaked Cathy out. The bird room was just like being in that movie. *shudder* Bird room.

The next thing was the most incredible part of the Museum. We spent more time in this room than in any other:

Hint: Everything is made of glass. EVERYTHING.

This table was used to make the Amazing! Glass! Things!

It was the glass flower display. They were AMAZING.

They looked REAL.

They were extraordinarily detailed.

The collection was started in 1886, and were once used in classes at Harvard.

Wow.

If you're ever here and only have time to do one room, do the glass flower collection.

The pictures are not doing it justice. Even close up, it looked like they were real flowers.

More.

Loved it. We stayed until they closed the museum.

Monday: A Two Part Series

Monday was so busy that I'm breaking up the blog posts. We'll start with the Duck Tour.

We'd never heard of Duck tours until a chance encounter with Cathy's doctor. Her daughter lives in Boston and she told us that we just *had* to go on a Duck tour. Then we mentioned Duck tours to other friends who have been to Boston, and they all said that we *had* to go on a Duck Tour. So we went on a Duck tour.

Cathy waiting to buy tickets.

It was pretty neat. Cathy hoped to go on the Pink Duck, but we ended up on the orange one.
Kilroy had apparently been there.

We also noted the location of the life vests.

Unfortunally, our tour guide (Captain Courageous!) had mic problems, so we did not catch the story on everything. But we got lots of cool pictures! He also had a duck quacking horn- when he honked it, we were to wave at the people gawking at us and say "Quack Quack!" That was surprisingly fun.

This has nothing to do with history- but Cathy was enamored by Tealuxe!
We got a picture of ourselves when we passed a mirrored building. See? We're in the orange Duck!

There were some pretty awesome churches along the way.

Like this one!

This one has Tiffany glass windows. You have to go in to see them, but they are the original Tiffany windows.
Pretty.

Everything in Boston is pretty. This building is the jail- the "blinds" that are in the windows are actually the bars. It looks like any office building- you'd never know it was a jail unless you read the sign. (or the Duck guy told you!)

A competing Duck tour- with their pimped out Duck boat.

When they did the Big Dig, they tore down all the old buildings- except this one section of one building. People still live there!

The best part of the tour was the water part.

Scenic views.

More views. The bridge is hard to see, but it's really neat!

The back of the Science Museum.

Also, Cathy got to drive the boat. For real. Here's a picture! She did not crash the Duck, which was almost more than could be said for the tour guide.

The tour guide nearly drove us into this dock. For real. Luckily he was able to turn at the last minute. Woo! Cathy's a better boat captain than the tour guide. Cathy rocks.

That was the end of the Duck Tour- we recommend it!

Freedom Trail

We woke up to reasonably dry and warm (but not too hot!) weather.

After checking on our yacht...

Kirk and our array of boats. Yesss...we own all of these...

We decided to walk The Freedom Trail.

The Freedom Trail is marked with a red line. Here's where we started. You just follow the line and it takes you to a ton of the Revolutionary war historical sites and other historical places in Boston. (Cathy had "Follow the Yellow Brick Road...Follow the Yellow Brick Road...running through her head most of the day.)

But before we really got started, we were distracted by this park, and the art in it! There were a bunch of artists selling various types of art.

Plus this cool statue at the park.

We started at the USS Constitution Museum. (It was free!) Note Kirk in the lower left hand corner, following the red line. We were not allowed to take pictures in the Museum, but you can read all about it here. Cathy was most impressed with how long it was in service. It is still there, handing out outside the museum!

You were able to go aboard this boat- The USS Cassin Young it was in service during WWII and other wars. It was so small! A claustrophobic person would have a hard time being a sailor.

Kirk modeling one of the guns on board.

We also saw this- shout out to Jeremy- a New Holland product!

Next stop: the Bunker Hill Monument.

We climbed all 294 steps and were rewarded with this view.

We had walked past a lot of those houses- they were SO cute. We can't even imagine what they cost, but we inherit somebody's vast fortune, we are so there.

While we were walking, we saw this pretty church and neat street lamp...check out the street name! Shout out to Melanie and Ben!

Here Cathy is in front of a St. Francis stature at the famous Old North Church. ("One if by land, two if by sea...") Strangely, we forgot to take a picture of the church. We were starving at this point and had finally hit the North end, where all the Italian food is.

We headed to Maurizio's, which looked cute and reasonably priced. It was hard to choose- we were surrounded by Italian restaurants.

It was hard to choose.

Should we have wine?

Yes. Yes we should. This is the house white- we drank a lot of house wines in Italy. We shared one glass- only lunchtime, plus we did not want to get dehydrated. It was pretty good!
The we shared a bowl of lobster sweet potato corn chowder. YUM.

And the bread with pepper infused oil that came with our meal. The oil was great- spicy enough that it added a small kick, but not *too* spicy. Cathy's going to try to figure out how to make it when they get home.

Cathy's lunch- it was in a Parmesan sauce. Very simple, very good.

Kirk's was really good- it was pasta with a meat sauce and meat balls of lamb and beef.

We were seated right in the window.

Next Stop: Faneuil Hall.

Kirk models the hall for you!

It was pretty inside, and impressive to think of all the history that had happened there.

A view from the door.

Cool clock.

GOOD NEWS! This store gots lobstahs!

Not far away was the Old State House.

See that balcony? That's where the Declaration of Independence was read to Boston.
We decided to go in a nearby open to door, only to find...

A subway station! View American history, then catch a train!

Here's a very old graveyard. Cathy has a fascination with graveyards, particularly very old ones.

A gravestone.

We did not even scratch the surface of all that we could have done- we plan to go back and go in a few more places. For now, we had to go back to the hotel, because...

...we were meeting old friends! Nakita and I met when we were both shelvers at the UNC Michener Library.
“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”-St. Augestine

She now lives in Rhode Island and evaluates people's psychiatric needs in an emergency room. We ate at the Cheesecake Factory and took a walk through Harvard square. We'll be seeing her again on Thursday...stay tuned to see what awesome thing we're going to do! In the meantime, we decided to....

Call it a day- the harbor near our hotel.