Boston babymoon, Post 2: Harvard University

On Friday, October 5th - our second full day in Boston - we took a tour of the prestigious 375-year-old Ivy League university, Harvard. Some of its more famous alumni include presidents and prime ministers of the USA and various other countries (including Canada), Ralph Waldo Emerson, Matt Damon, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg!

In the early afternoon we headed to the Harvard Square T station and spent a while wandering around the nearby streets before our tour. (I should also mention that, despite it being fall, the weather was warm and sunny during our first two days in Boston. After that it turned cold and rainy for the rest of the trip!) We ate a burger lunch and discovered the World's Only Curious George Store, which was a lot of fun to explore... and of course we bought a Curious George onesie for our own upcoming little monkey!

At 2pm we went to the Information Centre to join our tour. It was free and student-led - our guide was one of only five Kiwis (i.e. New Zealanders) studying at Harvard! For the next hour or more, our guide led our group of 20-30 tourists around the grounds of Harvard, showing us various buildings and telling us lots of interesting anecdotes about their history. He also described different aspects of student life to us, and it was really interesting to hear how Harvard differs from the university experience we are familiar with.

Harvard Yard

Harvard Yard

Oldest dormitory building on campus

Science building

Memorial Church

Memorial Church

The only building we went inside was Memorial Hall. It looks like a church, as it was designed and built by church builders, but it is in fact an entirely secular building established as a memorial to former students of Harvard who were casualties of war (initially the Civil War, but now all wars since then). Memorial Hall also includes the freshman dining hall, and is where Harvard graduation ceremonies used to be held (until they became so big that they are now held outdoors).

Below is a photo of our tour guide standing beside the statue of John Harvard. It is one of the most photographed statues in the USA. However, the statue contains three errors: (1) the year of Harvard's founding is out by 2 years; (2) the statue credits John Harvard with being the university's founder, when in fact he was a benefactor who gave the university a few hundred books; and (3) the statue is not even of John Harvard, as by the time they decided to make the statue, he was long-dead and no one knew what he had looked like!

John Harvard statue

The building we found the most interesting was the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library. Harry Elkins Widener was a wealthy 1907 graduate of Harvard, and he was a prolific book collector. He had a goal to acquire originals of seven of the most valuable books in the world. He had just completed a voyage to Europe, where he'd obtained the final book for his collection (something by Francis Bacon?), when he and his parents boarded the Titanic. Harry and his father (and the book) went down with the ship, but his mother and her maid survived in the lifeboats.

Harry's mother then donated $3.5 million to Harvard to build a library in his memory. Harvard tore down their existing library and built the Widener Library in its place. Two of the conditions of the donation were that there must always be a vase of fresh flowers in the library's entrance, and that no brick or stone could ever be removed from the building... or the ownership of the library would revert to the City of Cambridge (i.e. the city where Harvard is located).

To this day, Harvard studiously upholds these conditions. When the library needed to be extended - but no walls could be removed to do so - the library was instead extended down six storeys below ground level, and then underground most of the way across the open yard between the library and Memorial Church. I'm not sure if this was during the 1997-2004 renovation or not, but Wikipedia says that that renovation cost $97 million!

Unfortunately, after the tour ended and we thought we'd go and explore this fascinating labyrinth, we discovered that a Harvard ID is required to get into the library. No doubt that's to stop the library being filled with nosy tourists wanting to do exactly that!

The Widener Library - it extends underground most of the
way across to where this photo was taken from!

Resting on the library's front steps

And that was our tour of Harvard. Fascinating and highly recommended!

Boston babymoon, Post 1: BSO concert + tour

From October 3rd to 10th, we spent a relaxing week in Boston, Massachusetts. Boston is on the east coast of the USA, about 5000 kms from where we live. We had originally booked the trip back in April when we had some flight miles expiring, which gave us the homeward leg of the trip for free. We'd heard good things about Boston and had nowhere else in mind to fly to.

On Tuesday, October 2nd, we headed across the border after work and stayed the night with Donna and Terry. In the morning we drove the rest of the way to Seattle, where we left our car at a motel parking facility near the airport before boarding our 11:30am flight direct to Boston.

Almost five hours later, we landed in Boston, where the local time was almost 8pm. We caught a bus and then two different trains out to Somerville where our accommodation was, ate some dinner at a bakery cafe, and then lugged our carry-on-sized bags 1 kilometre - the last part of which was uphill. We arrived at Harris and Svetlana's home around 10pm, thoroughly ready to put our feet up. In fact, we sat down and watched the end of the first Presidential Debate with them!

Harris and Svetlana were not people we knew before this trip. They advertise on websites such as VRBO (vacation rental by owner) to rent out a couple of their bedrooms for short-term visitors to Boston, so that's how we ended up staying there. The room was nothing fancy but it suited us just fine, and we could use their kitchen and laundry whenever we liked. They were friendly and helpful hosts. This is their house:

On Thursday morning, we slept in (as became our custom all week!), and around noon we headed out to explore Boston. Throughout the week we travelled via the local public transport system: the train network known as "the T", and the bus system that links into it. For a 7-day pass allowing unlimited public transport use, we paid $18 each!

On Thursday afternoon, our first stop was a local farmers' market. This turned out to be extremely small, so we were soon on our way again!

Next, we hopped off the train at a station from where we could walk to a large mall called the Prudential Center. On the way, we saw the impressive Boston Public Library.

Boston Public Library, est. 1848

Across the road: old and new

Hubway, a bike-sharing initiative

After having lunch at an Irish restaurant, we spent a while shopping at the Prudential Center. Actually, we spent the whole time in Lord & Taylor, where I got a new pair of black boots since my old ones were wearing out, and Ben finally got a new hat to replace the one you have likely seen MANY times on this blog!

Then, around 4:30pm, we headed to Symphony Hall, home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Svetlana had told us the previous night that she thought people could get same-day concert tickets for $9pp by lining up at the Box Office at 5pm. We had been planning to buy tickets online, where prices ranged from $30 to $114, so we quite happy to hear about such a bargain when it was no trouble at all to be there that early to line up! We queued for about half an hour, which flew by as we were chatting to the couple in line behind us. And that's how we got $9 tickets to one of America's "Big Five" symphony orchestras!

After spending the next couple of hours relaxing in a smoothie/yoghurt cafe, we headed back to Symphony Hall in time for the 8pm concert. Symphony Hall was built in 1900 and is said to be one of the top three concert halls in the world in terms of acoustics. Our seats were in the VERY back row, and with a bit of an obstructed view due to a pillar a few rows in front of us... but when you're there to hear rather than to see, that doesn't matter!

Here are a few photos Ben took while we waited for the concert to start...

The front of the concert hall

The back of the concert hall

An usher

The program that week was Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet, Bernstein's Serenade, and Dvorak's Symphony No. 8 in G. There was a guest performer for the second piece, and this was American violinist Joshua Bell. We had never heard of him before, but when we got home and told one of our violinist friends about it, she was rather envious! If you've ever heard the story about the famous violinist who dressed down and played exquisite classical music on a $3.5 million Stradivarius violin in a Washington DC subway station at rush hour, as a social experiment to see whether anyone would stop and take notice (see video and article here)... well, that was Joshua Bell!

Joshua Bell

So, we had a wonderful experience! We enjoyed the music, the atmosphere, and the expressive antics of the conductor and Joshua Bell.

Now I'm going to jump forward two days to Saturday, when we returned to Symphony Hall for a free backstage tour at 1pm. Our guide was very knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the history of the famous music hall - apparently the first in the world to be built with the principles of acoustics in mind. He told us that even during modern-day renovations/ maintenance, they are very careful to remain true to the original design - for example, by using the same materials to reupholster the chairs, and the same wood and manual woodworking techniques to replace the stage floor - all to avoid even the slightest change to the hall's world famous acoustics!

Corridor between the lobby and the
music hall

The grand music hall

One of many statues around the walls

An outside pillar

It was very interesting to go backstage and down into the basement, where we saw storage areas, practice rooms, the elevator for moving the grand piano, etc.  Our guide had many anecdotes about it all. One was about the first woman to join the BSO (in the 1920s, I think)... there was nowhere for a lady to change into her concert attire, so she - being a petite harpist - would change inside her harp case!

The view from the stage (we weren't allowed to step on it;
this photo was taken from a doorway)

A cupboard covered in stickers from visiting orchestras

Symphony Hall basement

Imagine changing inside one of these cases!

So, that's the BSO and Symphony Hall. We recommend the $9 concert tickets and a backstage tour if you're ever in Boston!

A mural at the Symphony T station

Bluegrass and Shakespeare... or not!

One Saturday morning at the end of August, we headed across the border with Angharad for a blissful overnight trip to Whidbey Island.  The plan for Saturday included going to a bluegrass festival at the Meerkirk Gardens, and then seeing a free outdoor performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Lunch at Calico Cupboard in Mt Vernon

Here are some photos we took at the peaceful Meerkirk Gardens as we meandered our way towards the distant strains of bluegrass music...

Once we reached the music, we realised that "festival" may have been a bit of an overstatement.  There were three bands playing throughout the day, one at a time.... and no queues for the site's three port-a-loos!  Anyway, it was a pleasant setting and we listened to most of the second band's set before deciding it was time to hit the road again if we wanted to have time to purchase the makings of a picnic dinner before the Shakespeare performance.

The band and the crowd

18 week photo

After getting ourselves picnic-ready, we headed to the outdoor performance venue, arriving only to find cardboard signs and sympathetic volunteers advising us that the evening's performance was already full. They'd had hundreds more people show up than they expected and were now turning carloads more away. Even our sob story of driving all the way from Canada was to no avail!

Anyway, we drove to a nearby beach - the same one we had eaten at with Kelly, Janae and Etta a month earlier - and enjoyed our picnic dinner there instead, watching cruise ships pass by and happy dogs frolic on the sand.

That night we stayed at a Dutch-themed motel in Oak Harbor, and on Sunday morning we had a hearty breakfast at a typical American diner down the road.

Our motel

Low-fat breakfast...?

After breakfast, we followed some of the locals to a meeting back on the mainland at Anacortes, and had lunch with them afterwards at their favourite Chinese restaurant.

That afternoon we drove home again, having had a slightly different kind of weekend to what we had anticipated, but a very nice one nonetheless!