This archival post was migrated from an old Facebook album, so please excuse the choppy writing and odd formatting.
Brattle Hall in Harvard Square, currently housing a theatre and an unusual cafe called the Algiers, where we ate falafels and had beer after we checked in to our hotel.
Our hotel, the Harvard Square Hotel. Not much to see outside, but inside it was nicely renovated and the service was good without being annoyingly pretentious. Great location and quiet.
The interior of our hotel room.
Church Street near Harvard Square early in the morning, taken when I ducked out for a solo coffee run while Josie got ready.
Crema Cafe in Harvard Square. I was pleased to find a place with excellent coffee so close to our hotel, something that can be surprisingly hard to find even in NYC.
A blurry photo of the interior of Crema Cafe. Great coffee and pastries, good vibe with lots of students studying and chatting.
The Columbus Day festival in Harvard Square closed many of the streets around our hotel on Sunday, and there was some sort of bands competition with musicians playing and people dancing. This photo was taken from our hotel window.
The rain did not stop the celebrations. Another shot from our hotel window (the festival ended before dark, so sleep was not an issue, thankfully!)
A cool stone church near Harvard Square, now used as the José Mateo Ballet Theatre.
The grounds of the José Mateo Ballet Theatre.
The New England Telephone Building in downtown Boston, dating from 1947. Many of Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone-related discoveries were made in the Boston area.
The Boston Children’s Museum in Fort Point. Interestingly, Josie used to work at the Children’s Museum in London, Ontario, that was apparently based on this one. The large white and red milk jug at the right is a food stand.
A view of cloudy downtown Boston near Atlantic Avenue. Their huge downtown raised expressway was buried in the Big Dig and replaced aboveground by a long strip of linked parks called the Rose Kennedy Greenway.
A historic square in downtown Boston, more reminiscent of a European city than a North American one.
Along much of the waterfront there were condo developments and renewals, including this one called Rowes Wharf, built in a gaudy 1980’s faux-historic style. This is the sort of thing that many people wanted for Toronto’s Distillery District (“make the new buildings match the old”) and seeing this makes me thankful they went for a more courageous old/new contrast instead.
A drawbridge across the Fort Point channel.
Most of the street drains in Boston have this plate: “Don’t Dump. Drains to Boston Harbor.”
The Fort Point area of Boston, where we enjoyed an awesome lunch at Sportello, a fantastic upscale Italian diner/bakery. The area reminded me of some of the streets near Richmond and Sherbourne with their old converted warehouses.
As close as we got to the Boston Aquarium. Hard to tell in this photo, but the crowd in the center was a long snaking lineup for tickets. It was already getting late in the day and we decided that we didn’t want to spend the rest of it in a lineup.
Neptune Oyster Bar in downtown Boston, highly recommended from numerous sources. We didn’t make it inside but we did enjoy fantastic oysters, mussels and clam chowder at the Harvard Square location of the local Legal Seafoods mini-chain.
The Paul Revere House in downtown Boston, where Paul Revere lived and began his famous ride. They sure love their Paul Revere and revolutionary war history in Boston.
The Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum in the Fort Point Channel. Though the original site of the tea dumping is long gone, buried under landfill and built over, this new tourist attraction apparently lets you watch some guys in historic drag dump bales of fake tea over the side of a recreated ship. We just took some photos from a nearby bridge.
This is me beside the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum.
A handy thing about traveling in the US is that you never have to worry about forgetting what country you’re in.
Bukowski Tavern is the tiny red box at the bottom center of the photo above, nestled into the corner of a giant parking garage overlooking the Massachusetts Turnpike. The Bukowski Tavern is listed as one of the 10 best craft beer bars in the US, along with the Blind Tiger in NYC which we visited in May.
Me inside Bukowski Tavern, a small dark and dank place, as a good bar should be.
Josie inside Bukowski’s, with the scenic Massachusets Turnpike in the background.
The draught list at Bukowski Tavern. Thanks to their handy “snack size” glasses we were able to sample the Oskar Blues Shidy #1 Porter, the Cambridge Brewing Great Pumpkin Ale, Gritty’s Black Fly Stout and the Notch Session Polomavy, all delicious representations of their types.
A church service getting underway on Sunday morning just outside Harvard Square. The church adjoins a burying ground from the Revolutionary War.
A “burying ground” from the Revolutionary War, near Harvard Square.
A “burying ground” from the Revolutionary War, near Harvard Square.
Commonwealth Avenue in Back Bay.
Random interesting architecture in the Back Bay area.
The Esplanade along the Charles River, cut off from Back Bay by a busy highway. Traffic in Boston was quite terrible, though we found the drivers slightly less homicidal than in Toronto.
A small stone bridge, out of place near Fenway Park in an area that was otherwise quite industrial and criss-crossed with highways and major roads.
Fenway Park, the oldest remaining stadium in major league baseball. I like that it’s right downtown, easily walkable from various subway lines.
Fenway Park, as seen from Ipswich St. The smallness of the stadium and the way it meets the busy streets so closely is a stark contrast to the isolation and general concrete monstrosity of the Rogers Centre.
Yawkey Way, the stretch of street which Fenway Park uses as an address. One side of the street is the stadium, the other is concession stands and souvenir shops.
The Ted Williams statue outside Fenway Park.
We took a tour of the Harvard Yard with “Hahvahd Tours” and it was worthwhile at $10 each. Here our tour guide, a second year student from Hawaii, tells a story about the building behind, which is a library built to memorialize a former student who died in the sinking of the Titanic. His mother donated the money to build it on the condition that it never be torn down or modified architecturally. So far that has been upheld, though they have expanded it by digging down many basement levels.
The main Harvard Yard, surrounded on all sides by old buildings that are used as freshman dorms. Almost all students at Harvard live on campus.
Canaday House, one of the newer student residences in Harvard Yard, apparently built to be “riot proof” due to the political turmoil and protests of the early 1970’s.
Our tour guide pointed out that all buildings at Harvard are built using the architectural style of the time, and they never build in a faux-historic style. “If it looks old, it’s old, if it looks ugly, it’s new” is the slogan she used.
This is not a church. This is Annenberg Hall, the dining hall for Harvard freshman students, which our tour guide likened to Hogwart’s in Harry Potter. Sadly there is no public access.
The John Harvard statue in Harvard Yard, surrounded by a perpetual crowd of tourists like us, many rubbing his shiny toe for good luck.
Another beautiful old building in the Harvard Yard.
Exiting the Harvard Yard on to Massachusetts Ave.
Just another random stunning huge building in the Harvard area, there are too many to count.
The Harvard Community Garden.
The Harvard Square area at dusk.
The Harvard Coop bookstore in Harvard Square, three floors of books and magazines and a cafe. I bought a great book called Transit Maps of the World.
A statue of John Singleton Copley in Copley Square in the Back Bay area of Boston.
The Boston Public Library as seen from Copley Square. The inside is apparently as impressive as the outside but it was closed on Monday when we passed by.
A statue of the Tortoise and the Hare in Copley Square.
The campus of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) is in Cambridge about two subway stops from Harvard Square, roughly halfway between Harvard Square and downtown Boston. MIT is the probably the world’s best science and technology university, so as a computer science graduate from a (ahem) slightly less prestigious institution I felt it was my duty to visit.
Frank Gehry’s Stata Center on the MIT Campus. Many of the Computer Science classes are held inside.
Another view of Frank Gehry’s Stata Center on the MIT Campus.
Yet another view of Frank Gehry’s Stata Center on the MIT Campus. I could have photographed this all day and all the photos would have been cool.
Some sort of garden that “harvests” water for reuse on the MIT campus.
Sloan Laboratories on the MIT Campus.
The Daniel Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory on the MIT campus. I was suitably impressed.
A sculpture on the MIT campus, apparently designed to demonstrate some of the architectural structural concepts being researched.
A vast construction site near the MIT campus. I liked the inspiring slogans on the banners above.
“Take Pride in Your Work. Let Quality be a Reflection of You.”
“No Shortcuts. Keep your Family in Mind.”
“Safety is Non-Negotiable. No Toleranc.e”
A cool retro store and sign near the MIT campus.
We liked the signage on this warehouse near the MIT campus.
Josie on some of the beautiful grounds of Radcliffe, a few blocks from the main Harvard Yard. Radcliffe was the women’s college where all women who attended Harvard graduated from until 1999 when it officially merged into Harvard and the degrees granted to men and women became identical.
The grounds of Radcliffe.
A nice contemplative garden at Radcliffe.
A sign left behind on a bench at Radcliffe. There were quite a large number of homeless types hanging around Harvard Square, usually in packs, though they seemed pretty harmless and non-aggressive.
Boston as seen from the “T” subway red line crossing the Charles River from Cambridge. Boston has the oldest subway tunnel in North America, the narrow snaking green line which runs special articulated trains that are a weird cross between a subway, a bus, and a Toronto streetcar. If you don’t hang on you’ll go flying.
On our last morning before heading to the airport we had breakfast at the IHOP. First time ever for both of us, and the pancakes were great. Not sure why I’m surprised by that…
Niagara Falls, as seen from our plane window about 3 minutes before landing in downtown Toronto. Niagara Falls is surprisingly close when you’re going 600 miles per hour.