Trip to Boston (still in progress)…

Julie and I arrived in Boston on Wednesday night at about 6:30 PM. After checking into the hotel and calling the fam to let then know that me made it O.K., we decided to go out and explore the city and find something to eat. Both of us have been so redunkulously busy lately that neither of us had time to prep for the trip. We knew where nothing was and didn’t even have a map. So, we just decided to walk until we found someplace that looked like it would have good local seafood.

We ended up at this place called the Atlantic Seafood Company. It’s a nicer place (by that I mean a little more expensive than I expected), but holy crap man, was that some gooooooood seafood. The place gets fresh fish in everyday—they even reprint their menus every day to keep up with the latest deliveries. We both had some clam “chowda” in a bread bowl and then we had some appetizers too (fried clams and some Italian style calamari). Really great stuff. Nothing like that in the Midwest. Since it was already late, we headed in for the night and prepared for our interviews the next day (well actually today).

I woke up early this morning and we had some morning interviews. During the lunch break we headed over to the mall which is connected to our hotel. Had some lunch, hit the Barnes and Noble for a map and headed back for the afternoon interview. After we were finished interviewing we decided we would hop on the subway and head out to Harvard to look around. We only had to take two trains to get there and it was a pretty fast and easy to navigate trip. The trains run on a color system and their direction is either called “in” or “out” of the city. So, we took the green in and transferred to red and took that out to Harvard. (I sound like a Bostonian already!). All the people that we’ve run into on the street and asked for help are super friendly. This is really a great city. It has the feeling of Manhattan, but a little smaller and much cleaner, and even a bit safer I think. And what’s pretty interesting is that an authentic, rich, blue collar Boston accent almost sounds like another language.

Anyway, back to Harvard. Harvard was pretty cool. Surprisingly, it was much more “touristy” than I expected—with gift shops, restaurants, the whole bit. But most of that was close to the stop where you get off of the train, once you walk into campus more it’s pretty much like you expect. Beautiful, old architecture everywhere you look. You really get a sense of how committed they are to their physical institution. Every building is brick or marble with wood all over the inside and they all have the feeling of giant old Catholic schoolhouses. It’s worth a visit. But, by far, the best part about Harvard was the Fogg Art Museum. When we first got there I was kind of bummed because I had to pay to get in, and I was considering whether or not it was really worth it to pay to get into just some university art museum. But man alive, it was absolutely worth it! What an incredible collection of stuff! There is one room that has Monet, Manet, Lautrech, Matisse, VanGogh and Picasso all right across from one another. And that’s really just the tip of the iceberg. They have so many significant wonderful examples of work from a great range of artists. I even snapped off a few pictures of a Moholy-Nagy and a El Lissitzky before the security guard caught me. See below. I’ve never seen a Lissitzky before in person—very cool.

After taking the trains back from Harvard we met up with a former NKU student who now lives in Boston and he told us of this great sandwich shop that we went to called the Parish House. Great food, but again I spent too much money. This trip is great, but I think it’s going to break me. I see a lot of McDonalds in my future ; )

More interviews tomorrow during the day and later we’re heading to the North Shore to see all of the historic stuff. In addition to all of the landmarks, I hear there are some authentic mom and pop bakeries there that I will have to patronize. I’ll let you know how it goes.