Roam With Me! Harvard, Cambridge and Boston -- June 21-22, 2019

A few months before our trip to Boston, I reached out to a man who works for Harvard and politely asked him if he'd speak to my daughter about the college and its graduate program for her to consider in the next few years to complete her dream of becoming a paleontologist. Honestly, I thought he might shrug me off and suggest I take her on one of the group tours, but he didn't. He was very receptive to meeting with her. I won't give his name or his role at Harvard, but he's a very important man in the science department, and he not only graciously agreed to meet with her, he also treated us wonderfully during our visit with him.

This special meeting was part of my birthday gift to her, and she definitely enjoyed visiting with him and learning about how the grad program at Harvard works. It's really something, that's for sure. He also gave us each caps with the science department logo on them, and he gave us a special tour of classrooms, labs and graduate student work areas. He also walked us into the Museum of Natural History which is connected to the zoology and anthropology museums as well. He made sure to steer us toward the special exhibit of mind-blowing glass flowers, and he pointed out his favorite fossils. I've sent him a thank-you gift for his time, and I'll never forget his amazing office with a glorious view of trees and open space in front of the museum.

Here are some photos of our time with him and of wonderful displays in the three attached museums.

I took the following photo as proof that Harvard, arguably one of the premier universities in the world, uses blackboards and chalk!! They took my chalkboards away years ago, and I still miss them. If Harvard insists on blackboards, then I think they should be put back in public school classrooms, too. Smart boards, be damned. Give me a good old chalkboard any day!!

There are three massive whale fossils hanging in the main room of the zoology museum, and they've been hanging there for over one hundred years! Crazy.

The following photos show some of the glass flowers as well as the information signs about them. Truly mind-blowing that all of them are made out of glass and all made over one hundred years ago. We later saw small sea animals made by the same father and son duo displayed in the Museum of Science (photo below). It's so hard, even when looking at them up close, to fathom that these are made out of glass and that they were made so long ago and have survived this long, too.

The room in which they are displayed is quite large, and there are many cases like these simply full of every imaginable type of flower and grass.

The following photo is of a Day of the Dead ofrenda in the anthropology section. I took a few since I teach Spanish, and I share information about this Mexican tradition at the end of October every year with my students.

This is just part of Harvard's campus. It's quite pretty. We didn't wander around much of it, though, as we were hungry and needed some lunch.

After we walked through the above gate, we found a restaurant which was also a pub, so I ordered a local beer called Clown Shoes Mango, and it was delicious. If you happen to know if that beer is available outside of the Cambridge area, leave me a comment below. Thanks.

Then, since I am a well-known book and book store addict, we visited Harvard Book Store, which was established in 1932. Wow! What a nice store. It's well-arranged and beautiful. Naturally, I bought a couple books, and I took many photos. As we were paying, the cashier noticed my Nebraska Writers Guild t-shirt and asked if I was from Nebraska. When I answered in the affirmative, he said they used to have a store book buyer from Broken Bow. I suspect that was his only familiarity with Nebraska, but at least he knew a little about it. Harvard Book Store is one of the 50 book stores depicted in the box of post cards I'd bought the day before in Trident Booksellers in Boston (see earlier post), so I was thrilled to visit another of those 50 (and I'll soon visit a fourth in Nashville). It is quite worthy of being considered as one of the best book stores in the world. Here are some photos:

Soooooooooo pretty!




























Behind Harvard Book Store is Grolier, which claims to be the oldest poetry store -- around for over 90 years. It's a very small store, and we looked around for a bit but didn't buy anything. I did look specifically to see if they carried any of Ted Kooser's books, but they didn't. I was a little disappointed because, even though he's a Nebraska poet, he was the U.S. Poet Laureate as well, so I really think a store devoted to selling only poetry collections should carry at least one of his books.

We also visited Raven Used Books which is only a few blocks away from Harvard Book Store. Then it was time for an ice cream break, so we stopped at J.P. Licks and had what I'd consider to be some of the best ice cream I've ever had -- however, a few days later when we were in New Haven, we went to Clark's Restaurant and had pizza, a taste of birch beer (which we'd never heard of before but is basically New England's version of root beer but clear in color), and truly delicious ice cream that put the ice cream at J.P. Licks to shame. I noticed, though, that J.P. Licks had been voted the best ice cream by Boston Magazine for 2017 I believe it was, so don't get me wrong -- it was definitely good, but Clark's ice cream was better.

Then we took another long walk, so we could walk along M.I.T.'s campus as we returned to our hotel. Here are a few photos.

As we walked back along the Charles River, I took another photo of a building whose top floors had been shrouded in fog the day before when we'd toured Boston.

As we passed under the Longfellow Bridge (which we'd crossed yesterday from above), we were quite surprised to find a whole line of trophies on display on the ledge. Apparently, it's an odd, yet cute, Cambridge tradition to leave trophies here. 

My daughter had never eaten at the Cheesecake Factory before, so we went there for a pre-birthday supper. Our food was really good, but our meal was ruined by the extremely loud fire alarm going off repeatedly. The place was quite full, and when it first went off, we looked at each other with concern and wondered if we should leave, but the servers quickly went around telling everyone it was fine and that it happened sometimes. Finally, it stopped and people applauded. The reprieve was short-lived, though, and once again our ears were assaulted by the loud alarm. This happened repeatedly for some time, so we asked for to-go containers. I had mentioned to our waitress that it was the eve of my daughter's birthday, so during one of the alarm-bell lulls, she and a few others brought a small dish of ice cream and sang to her. She was not greatly amused by the singing and thought I'd put the servers up to it, but our waitress came to my defense and assured her I hadn't. I did get a smile out of her before our ears were assaulted once again and we beat a hasty retreat.

The next day was her actual birthday, and we went to the Museum of Science which was near our hotel. Then we grabbed an Uber because my feet were quite sore from the two full days of extensive walking, and we went to the New England Aquarium. This would have been a wonderful place to visit, but we were there on a Saturday, so it was simply much too crowded. The inner tank is four stories high, and there is a spiral path that encircles it to the top. We also took in a movie about great white sharks at the IMAX. Imagine our dismay, though, when we entered the lobby only to find that the theater's fire alarm was on the fritz, too!!! It emitted an ear-piercing continuous shrill noise, so we waited outside a bit until shortly before the film began. Fortunately, the alarm malfunction was contained to the lobby only. Phew.

The above photo is of some sea creatures made out of glass that I mentioned above. A few look a little obscene, right? Ha, ha. 

Above is my daughter, the birthday girl and future paleontologist.

Seaside in Boston. The sun was quite intense, and she was yelling at me to hurry up and take the darn photo!

My one regret is that we didn't have time to get out on a boat. I would have liked to go on the whale watch excursion, but it wasn't meant to be this trip. Clearly, one can only do so much in just three days in Boston and Cambridge, and I think we managed to get a lot of great things in during those days. A future trip may need to include a full week or more because I'd like to return to some of the places -- the bookstores, naturally -- and I'd like to see more of the historical side of Boston that we didn't get to see.

I'll leave you with three photos from our short visit to New Haven, Connecticut, where we visited the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural Science -- which will be closed all of 2020 as it undergoes a complete renovation. The first is from that museum, and the following two are from Clark's which I mentioned above. That's not Sprite or 7-Up in her glass or even sparkling water. It's birch beer, and it's delicious!