That said, I can move on to our Boston trip!
We took an Amtrak train Friday evening, traveling through five states I had not previously been in. It got dark after Jersey, unfortunately, so I didn't get to see much scenery that evening. However, we were very entertained by three guys sitting next to us on the train. They were on the way to the Jay Z concert at Madison Square Gardens. One guy was big, looked like a bodyguard, went to Colby Community College at one point in his life, and was wearing some fancy pants sunglasses, I forget which designer. And the three tried to convince Ian he should get some designer shades. Guy number 2, sitting across from us, was married, and had a super cute kid out for peewee football, and his kid's team used the Wildcat for the mascot. He also thought we had it good, experiencing small town Midwest, and also a big city, and said most people in the city miss out because they only know one place. Guy number 3, we think, was drinking a larger portion of their expensive whiskey (or something else expensive; I can't remember now). He wanted to talk politics, and was very opinionated (pro-Hilary man). Anyway, overall, they were pretty nice, and made our train experience one to talk about! We arrived in Boston pretty late, and after arriving at Daniel and Megan's, we chatted a bit, then turned in for the evening.
Saturday morning greeted us with cold temperatures and near-snow drizzles, which ended our entertaining the idea of taking a boat ride.
However, we found lots of fun stuff to do (after a quick stop at GAP for a scarf for me and a rain jacket for Daniel).
We got to visit historic places like Faneuil Hall, the Old North Church, and Copp's Hill Burying Ground, all on the Freedom Trail.
We also had coffee and desserts at an Italian shop while discussing faith, walked through the Holocaust Memorial, passed by Daniel's office, browsed at an interesting store, wandered through Boston Common and the Public Garden, and walked down their fancy pants shopping street.
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| This is the State Capitol Building. We didn't take photos of the protesters who want to make weed legal. They had a bunch of funny sayings, like "free the tree." Funny, because it isn't a tree. |
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| This is a shot of Boston Common. Daniel got much cooler shots of all this (and everything else!), so I'll just reference you to their blog. |
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| We thought it was funny... Lost Kids right next to First Aid. I think this was for the Walk for Hunger, which was the next day. |
And we ate at the Union Oyster House where Fox got to take apart a big lobster for (I think?) the first time.
Sunday was church, followed by a trip to MIT, because Ian wanted to see a project that Olin did on their campus. Megan and I discovered commonalities of architect's/landscape architect's wives. I'll put our thoughts on a separate post in a little while. At any rate, this excursion resulted in lots of photos, and discussions about Frank Gehry, the architect of the Stata Center, below (Seussian, I concluded).
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| Looking up. I don't think this could be the best use of space... there's got to be weird unusable areas in the rooms, or in between the rooms and the outer walls. |
Ian wanted to see the space behind the Stata Center. It was pretty cool — he used photos of it (before we went) as inspiration for a project at Duke he was working on, so he really wanted to see it in real life.
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| The green roof area. There's grass around that corner. The brick corner. Not the shiny thing. |
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| A "classical Roman amphitheater" on the green roof. Also designed by Olin, we discovered. Although we did critique some of the tree placement. |
After Ian, Daniel, and Fox had their fill, we went back to Daniel and Megan's apartment to hang out and play Boggle until we left for the train station... then we slept most of the way home.
Daniel, Megan, and Fox, thanks for a great weekend!
And finally, a couple ending photos (stay tuned for "You might be an architect's wife if...", Purse Day, and our trip home!)
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| The eclairs I successfully made! (Kind of a recipe from mom, so this fits the concrete aspirations list!) |
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| We are almost done with thank you notes! |