boston trip
November 22nd, 2007 by shinzu
Recently, I took a weekend trip to Boston to visit Justin who moved down there to attend Harvard. It was a pretty good trip (except for the freaking cold weather), where I had a chance to check out Boston, Harvard, MIT, and the surrounding areas. Also I got to see some really neat architecture and museums there.
I took a red-eye Jet Blue flight from the bay area (I left straight from work) to Boston. Jet Blue is a pretty comfortable airline, but the flight was extremely brutal. There was someone who kept squishing a candy wrapper which drove me near nuts in the middle of the night.
When I landed I had to figure out how to get to Boston with the public transportation which wasn’t that hard.
The first thing I noticed about Boston was that it was FREAKING COLD. I had an undershirt, shirt, sweather, and a thick jacket and it was still cold. It was about 45 degrees outside, but with the wind chill, it was freaking freaking freaking cold.
After taking the subway to Harvard, I got off at Harvard Square. This was the first shop I perused around. What was funny about being in the bookstore was that they had a lot of books from the Harvard school itself. It made me think that Harvard has released quite a few books in the business and law realm.
One thing about Boston that is different from California is that all of the street names are different. In California, you have a lot of names based on Mexican ancestry, while in Boston, you have names based form the colonial era. Example street names are ‘quicy’, ‘adams’, ‘massachusetts’ , etc.
For about 10 seconds I was like.. ‘wow there is a Lee’s Sandwich here!’ But turns out it is a totally different shop.
Boston is also unique because it has a lot of churches. And the churches have deep roots, all the way to the 17th century.
This is a significant landmark, where I think the former Harvard Presidents are buried. Sort of morbid if you ask me.
I went into an entrance of some park.
Something I began to notice immediately was that the leaves on the trees really embody fall colors. To draw another So Cal analogy, you don’t see palm trees turning orange.
I stayed in the Harvard campus for a couple of days.
This is the Graduate School of Design. What you see here are top notch models that can cost in the thousands of dollars.
Along the wall also has the top architecture works from the Harvard classes.
The architecture studio is divided into different floors. The undergrads would take the bottom floors, where the top floors would be taken by the grad students and phd students.
Around the building, you would get to see a lot of the 1st year master’s projects. What you see here is a test of how good the perception is of a person. The tape actually is on different walls, but if you take a picture (like here), it should make it seem like it is on a 2-d space.
Another example of this 2d/3d play.
Architecture students also have access to a laser cutting machine. I’m guessing they load some type of diagram, and the laser cutting machine cuts the material exactly as you specify.
Another cool architecture model. This one cost 4k to make I think.
In addition to having colonial names, the architecture itself looks old school.
What everyone does for good luck is rub the feet of this statue. That is why if you go up close, you will see it more faded than the rest of the statue.
The law school library I think.
Even though the first day was freaking cold, it was still a gorgeously crisp day outside.
The mass transit here in Boston is awesome. Pretty easy to navigate to get you to your next destination.
Like I mentioned before, the fall colors of the trees is something you don’t see back at home.
The next thing we did was to explore Boston.
In downtown Boston, there is a large park with a very pretty lake.
Newbury St is an area like South Coast Plaza. where there is high class shopping in a nice outdoor area.
To take a break from cold weather, what is the best thing to do to? Get more cold drinks hehe. Here we went into Tealuxe. Some interesting tea mixes here.
We saw a big bean bag, so decided to go in.
This store just sells bean bags of Boston Baked Beans and the baked beans themselves.
Some statue in front of the mall.
For dinner, we went to wagamama which is a British run Japanese ramen chain.
The ramen here was very interesting. It embodies the same broth, but non traditional ingredients. My meal had a miso broth with chopped sirloin steak.
This was in an Urban Outfitters. Stay in school!
Since Justin was busy, I explored the area by myself for a bit. Here I went to Boston Public Library.
The library really wasn’t that cool, so I head out to the mapparium.
The mapparium is in the area of the Christian Science Plaza, which is where they make the Christian Science monitor.
Some cool buildings.
A cool water area.
This is the entrance to the mapparium. It is basically a spherical globe where you can see the contents of the world. Think of it as a pre-google maps artifact.
The inside hall.
This is basically what you stand in. It was created in 1935 where when you go in, you can see the world as it was back then. The chamber is interesting where if you whisper, everyone can hear it also.
After the globe tour, I went to the neighboring museum, The Eddy Baker Museum of Humanity. She basically mixed theology and science together for a strong case of how the Bible can heal.
Pic of the outside
Next to the museum was a beautiful church.
After Justin was free we went to the Institute of Contemporary Art. This pic is in the courthouse area on the way there.
In the museum was a bunch of models and displays. Unfortunately they don’t allow photos so this was the only one I could get.
For dinner we went to North Shore which is a nice Italian area.
When we were going out, it was freaking rainy and cold. We waited outside this one Italian restaurant for about half an hour because we heard it was going to be really good.
The meal we had was awesome. I had a pizzaita which was basically a steak with marina sauce and cheese. A play off a pizza.
Desert was at Mike’s Pastry where they have cannoli.
The cannoli here was delicious! Cannoli ricotta cheese stuffed with some other sweet stuff which makes a slightly sweet desert.
One can’t complete a Boston trip without going to a bagel shop. The one you see here is Finagle.
The bagels in Boston are a lot yummier than down in so cal. They make special varieties of the bagel itself and such.
Next thing in the stop was to do some uber touristy things, such as go onto a duck tour. This boat/car you see here can actually go on land and water.
Our tour guide was sort of.. weird and hyper, and after we got onto the water, it stopped being cool in like 5 minutes.
A view from the Charles river.
Forgot which bridge this was, but it looks awesome.
This was an ad in the subway. And yes after a while, I had a craving to buy this bread after seeing it a zillion times.
Next step was Fanueil Hall. On the way was Boston City Hall which you see here.
Attempting to mock history.
All over the city, you see signs of the recent Red Sox World Series win, EVERYWHERE.
The halls are pretty interesting. As you see here, it is like super long halls of food.
Pic of the outside.
Picture of an aquarium nearby. Around Boston I am constantly amazed by some of the cool architecture they have. I don’t think Justin expected to be in this photo hehe.
It was a beautiful view of the lake.
Justin had to do some work, so I decided to do some exploring at the Arnold Arboretum. Basically a big park area.
However it was way too dark and starting getting scary, so I headed back.
For breakfast the next day, we went to arrow street crepes, which is in Harvard.
I had a spinach and chicken crepe. And they put a ton of spinach in there which is pretty rare.
Boston is sort of weird where their subway lines are going ‘inbound’ or ‘outbound’ instead of stating the final destination at times.
And of course the east coast thing.. one of the zillion Dunkin’ Donuts.
On my last day, I did some exploring of MIT in the morning.
When I first got there, they have something called the ‘infinite corridor’. It is a long hallway going through most of the MIT campus connecting at least 8 buildings. This is some weird contraption here.
The beginning of the corridor.
Something I don’t understand hehe. I have to say, the people at MIT are A LOT nerdier.
Pic outside one of the halls.
One of the theater halls.
A chapel at the school.
For a chapel, it was a pretty weird interior. They had some shiny stuff at that back.
An ugly apt building.
“art”
Close up of the ugly building.
A Frank Geary building. Frank Gear is a popular architect who did the Walt Disney concert hall. If you look at this building and all his other buildings, they look the same with the sandblasted metal crap.
Another cool building at mit.
More buildings hehe.
So that ends my trip. I have to say Boston is a great place, and I would even consider living there sometime. And thank you Justin for putting some time aside to show me around.