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Published: June 25th 2008
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Yes i know you all knew it... i tried hiding it for a while, but you know these things happen hehehe...
so we are in Boston... well, we have been since Sunday evening and we leave (early) tomorrow morning, so here are the adventures in between...
Sunday, not alot... getting maps and getting lost is about all.. oh and watching the weather channel and working out what the Celcius conversions were hehehe... predicted severe thunderstorms for the Boston region for Monday...
Monday... despite severe thunder storm warning, we headed to Harvard... when we got there, the sky was BLACK and the rain was pouring on down.... there was a river down the stairs to the train station... so after a while we gave up cos i didn't want to visit Harvard in the rain after having built it up so much in my head, so we headed to the city instead in search of shelter... instead we found that the rain had stopped! We wandered down towards Fanhieul Hall where there are markets, and decided we would go to Salem which we had planned on doing anyway after Harvard...
We caugh the ferry over to Salem, and
Yo Ho Ho and a bottle of Rum!
where were these guys when we were in Penzance?? obviously in Salem... even though it was a bit chilly, it was still a really pretty ride. The rain thankfully held off while we were in Salem (for the most part) and we did the Heritage walk which took us all over the town and past all the historic and not so historic witch sites. There were some really interesting ones along the way and you got a sense of the history still very much entrenched in the place, even if it was amongst a billion witch shops! We did go through the Witch History Museum, which was very good and kind of filled in the gaps of what we didn't know and hadn't picked up. The story of the witch hunt was really interesting, how people would act and how vengeful the city became against each other... you just wouldn't believe it, and sounds like it was a VERY scary time to be alive, whether you were male or female!
Whilst waiting for the boat back, the rains came and boy did they ever!!! We all crammed into a little shelter by the wharf and then ran on to the boat, only to be soaked regardless of how fast you ran!
That said, we had a really smooth trip coming back, and once again the rain had cleared up once we arrived back in Boston.
Today we had sporadic storms predicted for the afternoon, but this morning was gorgeous sunshine! 😊 We had planned to go on a harbour and river boat trip that went through the locks etc on the Charles River, but when we got there we found out that the trip we were after didn't start until the weekend 😞 They suggested a similar trip though, which was the same length and price, so we jumped on that, and we had a really great time! All the boat photos were taken on this trip... we had gorgeous clear skies, little wind and beautiful scenery. We headed out to the Harbour islands to start with and then circled back around to East and North Boston, near Bunker Hill and past the USS Constitution where we learned that it is still comissioned in the US navy and as a result must sail 1 mile per year... which they do on July 4 of course out into the Harbour as part of the Independence Day celebrations.
After a lovely
cruise around, we headed back to Harvard to try again. This time we had success, although we had only just missed a brief downpour which occured while we were on the train! We did the unofficial tour, which is led by students, and was hilarious. It went for an hour and was free and had us laughing the whole way whilst also being rather informative. We did our own version of Primal Scream (which you can all investigate yourselves or ask me about when i get back) and saw all the major sites of the main Harvard campus. We also learnt about the rivalry between the College and the local City as well as teh rivalry with Yale, and giggled when we heard about the pranks that Yale had pulled over the years. The campus is beautiful, absolutely gorgeous... i loved it, and so much more than i loved Oxford...
Incidently they also have a VERY progressive fee structure that i think Australia should really take a look at. It is based upon your parents salary, if they earn under $80K your tuition is free, between $80 and $120K it is 5% of their salary and over $120K it
is 10% of their salary. It sure sounded good to me!!
anyway, i did find the business school after the tour had finished and danced around all dreamy like... and as a result, nearly missed the squirrel that was romaing the grounds with a peanut in his mouth (cute!). Did i speak to the Dean, no... but i did have a great time running around the Campus 😊
Tomorrow is a REALLY long drive, so i am going to head to sleep land soon.... next time you hear from me i will be in Canadia and will investigate the solution to the debate of a couple of friends of mine... do Canadians say about or aboot 😊
NIGHT!
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