Boston Day Three

I woke up to an amazing sunny morning and totally forgave Boston for the nasty weather.  What a gorgeous, gorgeous day!  It was still cold this morning when I walked out the door, with gorgeous sunshine.

I walked down to the train station and caught a line out to Harvard University.  Boston really looks like parts of Seattle to me.  This campus reminds me of the quad at UW.

I spent most of the day at the Museum of Natural History on campus... But I almost walked straight back out when I found myself facing 100 screaming kids filing into the exhibits.  Woah!!  Haha.

They had an exhibit of 4,000 glass flowers and plants- it was more than just for pretty, it was a botanist's exhibit.

Here is salvia and a bee at life size, and then magnified fifty times to demonstrate the state of the stamens when pollination occurs.  This is all glass.

The minerals room was cool.  I snapped pictures of gorgeous gems that I had never heard of... But definitely want to hear more about ;)

I loved the colors they occurred in.

Big 'ol bones.  Wooly mammoth, I think.  There were rooms and rooms of taxidermied mammals and birds, whale skeletons, bugs stuck with pins... Lots and lots of stuff to see!  I stayed there from about 10:30 till 2:00 then went to find lunch.  Grabbed a little bowl of quinoa salad at a food cart on campus and then went out to wander Cambridge.

I walked through campus and down to a river and followed it for a while before discovering I was going the wrong way- I found Craigie Castle though, the former headquarters for George Washington and home of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.  Very pretty :)

I walked back to campus another way to find the train station and rode over to Copley Square.  I arranged to meet a friend for dinner, and she suggested the steps of the Trinity Church- it's easy to find and just two blocks of her office.  We were teens together before she left Seattle to go to school on the East Coast- she loved it so much she never came back :)

In the summers she gives walking tours- she showed me around until J joined us around 6:00.  

This is a mural in the public library- it is an impressive place with marble staircases, an Italianate courtyard, murals, marble busts... Just lovely.  

I promised my Ernie pictures- enjoy, kid!

Here is J at the Boston Marathon finish line.  This is where the bomb went off last year at the marathon.  So tragic, and the marathon is in about three weeks.

It was lovely to see this girl- she is a talented lawyer, has a love of American and Russian history, and is a great storyteller.  We had a great meal of tapas and had a wonderful evening!