We started our day trekking out to Cambridge. I had originally planned to start with Harvard, but since I knew we'd be too late for the 10am tour (the subway ride was a bit longer than anticipated), I figured we stop off at MIT first. MIT's campus is spread out and doesn't seem to have a central location. (Not that I looked that hard, but still.) But the bits we wandered around by the train station were interesting!
I especially liked the molecule bike racks.
Tess was in a good mood and happy to pose anywhere.
We even passed by Google's offices! It was like seeing a celebrity! (Hah.)
Tess and I talked about what engineers and scientists do. She was impressed to learn that the very first video game was developed at MIT. (She's her father's daughter alright.)
Tess claimed that she likes science and stuff, but she likes English and art more. (She's also her mother's daughter!)
Fun fish statue at Legal Seafood. Okay, Legal Seafood is a big, fancy chain of restaurants around Boston, but I think it's such a weird name. Legal? As opposed to the less expensive, illegal sea food?
We wandered MIT's equivalent to the BYU Bookstore, which was fun. I was tempted to buy an MIT water bottle (not picture) for Cole since he had lost his at PAX the day before, but the $27 price tag put an end to that. Sheesh!
"Hey! We saw those ducks yesterday!"
Then we hopped back on the train and headed up to Harvard. Much of the area surrounding Harvard Yard is under construction, so it was a bit disorienting and hard to find my way around at first. Here's the famous Joshnston gate that everyone takes their picture under. I'm kicking myself for not getting a better picture of Tess, but I thought we'd be back to take a better one. Oops. Also, Tess refused to take a picture of me. Mean.
So we finally found our way to the tour center, only to discover they had just barely filled the last slots for the 11am tour, but they had room on the noon tour, would we like to join that? It was 10:30ish. Nope. There was no way Tess would wait that long, and I was beginning to doubt whether she'd last on an hour long tour. (She'd be fine if it was something super fun and exciting for a 6 year old, but I doubted this tour would be that for her.) So I opted for the $2 self-guided tour map.
On the way back to Harvard Yard we stopped at the famous Mike's Pastries for a little snack. (Only I didn't know it was famous. More on that in the next post.) Since it was Friday I told Tess she could pick any cookie she would like. She chose a sugar cookie and was happy as could be. That plus a hot chocolate (it was super cold and it helped keep hands warm!) cost $6!! Boston is expensive.
So, we wandered Harvard for a good hour, Tess putting it up with it all because she had a cookie and hot chocolate. (Which she spilled a good portion of on herself. She got SO dirty on this trip! I swear by the end she looked like a little homeless kid.) ((Don't tell her that. It makes her mad.))
In front of Matthews Hall. It's too bad Spring was so late in coming this year - the campus looked pretty dull and sad. I'm sure it's much prettier when the grass is green and the trees have leaves!
Massachusetts Hall - 2nd oldest building on campus, and housed Continental Army soldiers during the Revolutionary War.
Harvard Hall - old and stately!
We saw far more tourists on campus than students! (Except from about 10:50-11:00, during class change. But still, I suspect most students avoid this part of campus if they can.) Tons of tourists in front of the John Harvard statue, and I wasn't willing to wait in line to get a close up with him. They call this the "Statue of the Three Lies" because the inscription says "John Harvard, Founder, 1638." However, there aren't any known portraits of John, so they based this statue off of a distant relative of his. Also, John Harvard didn't found Harvard, it was only named after him because he donated a bunch of money. And finally, Harvard was founded in 1636. Oops times 3. Still, makes for a fun story!
The Memorial Church is pretty. The bells started chiming at 11am and the first one made Tess jump out of her skin! But after the initial surprise she really liked it.
Still working on that cookie.
About 3/4s of the bottom of this photo are cropped out. I had asked Tess to take a picture of me with lots of the church. We're working on her photography skills. ;)
Widener Library - the biggest library on campus, and supposedly pretty impressive on the inside. I wanted to check it out, but Tess was resistant and we still had hot chocolate that I didn't dare take inside. (This proved to be a well-founded worry later on.)
It was cold, but not too cold for selfies!
We walked out of the yard and passed by the Science Center; I didn't take a picture because, quite frankly, it's kind of an ugly building. As soon as you see it you think "Yep, that's a science center". Anyways, instead we walked over to the Memorial Hall.
This is a building dedicated to the Harvard men who died in the Civil War. It's really quite beautiful inside, but dark and hard to photograph. Tess was pretty impressed. I carried the hot chocolate, much to her dismay as she pranced and bounced around, happy to be inside somewhere warm!
At Holworthy Gate, only she wanted a picture at "the little gate" on the side.
There was still a bit I wanted to see, but it was getting colder, a storm was blowing in, and Tess was anxious to get to our next destination - the Boston Children's Museum!
So we got off the train downtown and found this awesome looking building while I tried to get my bearings. Doesn't it look like a super villain would work there? Also, Boston is a maze and GPS works only sometimes and it seems like no matter what I always started off in the wrong direction because street signs were often hard to find and not well marked. Oof.
But we eventually made it to the museum and It. Was. Glorious! Tess had such a fun time, and I enjoyed wandering from one exhibit to the next with her. I think she really missed her best buddy Cole at first, but soon she was chatting it up and making friends with the kids around her as only a Midwestern girl can do.
It was at about this point that we looked out the windows and realized it was snowing - hard. We had made it to the museum at just the right time!
These lights were really cool - they were actually each little dials that you could turn to change the color.
She played with the magnatiles for a long time (that's her little face at the end of the tunnel) even though we have them at home!
There was a water table that she played at for a long time, too. Despite my pleadings and best efforts, she still got pretty wet, dang it.
It was about 2 or 3 o'clock at this point and I was STARVING. I kept asking if she was hungry, but she claimed she wasn't.
Finally, I forced the issue and we went to the Au Bon Pain attached to the museum. Although I told her we could go back into the museum, Tess was so mad I made her leave! Pouting and scowling and huffing. And she ordered the mac and cheese and swore up and down that she would eat it, although in my gut I knew she wouldn't. I couldn't figure out what her problem was until we finally got our food and she started wolfing everything down. She was HANGRY. After she got a little food in her belly she was a sweet girl again. She gulped her chocolate milk and snarfed her chips and fruit, and ate about 5 bites of the mac and cheese. *sigh* Oh well, it turned out okay because my sandwich was pretty small and the mac and cheese was a perfect side dish.
Also, it was snowing hard still. Also, this Au Bon Pain had Cherry Coke Zero on tap, which I have never seen before and which made the $2.50 price tag a little easier to handle.
So we went back in and spent another 2.5 hours playing and such. Tess had such a good time now that she had a full belly!
All that talk that morning about going to college seemed pretty funny, because what this girl loved best was being the cashier at the pretend grocery store!
What is it about a pretend store that kids love? They certainly don't love the real thing as much!
I eventually looked at my watch and realized that it was 5pm. Oops. We were supposed to meet the boys downtown at 7pm for dinner. Two hours sounds like plenty of time to go back to the condo and rest a bit and then head back in. But this was Boston on a Friday evening. We tried to get on the blue line train, but it was PACKED. We tried to find our way to another line, but I'll admit I got lost. Well, not lost, I just took the long way to find the dang green line. And then once we were there I realized it was the entrance for the wrong way, and for the life of me I could NOT find the entrance for the line out of the city. (Turns out it was kind of behind the Old State House. Growl.)
By 5:45 I realized it was too late to go back to the condo; might as well just stay downtown. Poor Tess was tired and cold and hungry. So we worked our way over to Quincy Market, which was packed, but we managed to find 2 empty seats to rest on. Tess played on my phone and snacked on a few pretzels, and I read about Harvard and people watched. There were a TON of teenagers in our area, and I couldn't figure if they were there on a trip or if this was just the place to hang out. Either way, they were fun to watch. Doesn't matter what part of the country you're in, all teenagers are loud, goofy, awkward, and totally fun. Spencer would've fit right in.
Since dinner was kind of a bust the night before, we decided to try a much less formal, more touristy place: Durgin Park Restaurant. It's a really old restaurant that specializes in New England fare.
Our waitress was super friendly and spent the entire evening trying to get a scowling Tess to brighten up. (She failed.) ((Tess wasn't that grouchy, she just didn't want the waitress to bother her.)) Tess of course ordered the mac and cheese. Did she eat it? No. (Guess what I had for breakfast the next morning.) But she did eat all of her french fries and had 2 Shirley Temples, which came with the meal and which all the kids thought were pretty great. Cole had the mac and cheese, too, and Josh had a cheeseburger that he didn't even complain about! I had the clam chowdah and Boston baked beans, because when you're in Boston that's what you should have!
I know most people would go to Boston and have sea food, but I'm the only one in the family who likes sea food. Sure, the kids will eat shrimp, but that's not what Boston is known for. Also, sea food is PRICEY, especially in Boston. It was safer - and cheaper - to stick to things like this. I was already spending too much money on mac and cheese that wasn't eaten, we didn't need to add $25 a plate sea food meals to that.
Despite it being a touristy place, the food was really good!
And the kids were happy! This restaurant was a lot less noisy than the one the night before, which I think helped the kids calm down a lot.
We ended the meal by sharing a Boston cream pie, which was delicious!
The trip back home was cold, and we were all tired from a long day of wandering the convention center/Boston, but we were full and happy. It had been a great day!
