Boston, the Cradle of Liberty (or was that Philadelphia...)

Isn't this a pretty picture of the Boston Skyline.  I'm not even sure where I took it, so I won't say.  I love the way the shadows of the buildings hit the water.

Same with this picture.  The Boston Harbor is all around us.  We are staying at the Seaport Hotel--great location and beautiful facilities. Our room is on the 16th floor overlooking the Harbor and I could spend hours just looking at the view.  This isn't it, but it is just as interesting.  Logan Airport is just across the Harbor and we can see planes taking off and landing.  We could almost swim there.

Another picture of the fabulous Boston skyline.  

This is our second day in Boston, and by now I feel that I understand what all the excitement is about.  What a beautiful and fascinating city!  The history alone could occupy one for weeks, but since we don't have the time to absorb it all, we are sightseeing instead.  The weather is perfect and the only thing that prevents further walking is our aching feet.

Yesterday after we got settled into the hotel, we decided to take the Duck Tour, recommended by Mark and Martha from their visit to Boston a couple of years ago. The Duck Tour is kind of like the Hop On Hop Off Bus Tours that we have grown to love in various cities, but this one has the added advantage of being amphibious!  Yes, it drives around the city showing you the sights while a very funny guide adds his own amusing twists to the historical commentary (like: it's really Paul Revere on the Samuel Adams beer bottle because Paul was better looking than ugly Sam).  But then, using a special ramp built just for them, they drive right into the Charles River and show the folks water-based sights like Old Ironsides, i.e, the USS Constitution. They are truly amphibious!  The idea came from old WWII amphibious half boat/half truck DUKWs, or ducks as they were known, that were used to haul men and cargo from land-based sites right onto the beach and into the sea and onto ships when there were no dock facilities, or the docks had been blown up in the course of the war.  When the Duck Tours began the vehicles were actual WWII DUKWs, but now they are replicas--easier to maintain and operate.  The tour was a good way to get an overall feel for the city and the magnificent Harbor.  Before the Duck Tour, we wandered around the North End, Boston's "little Italy" loaded with authentic pizza joints and cannoli pastry shops.  We didn't have the cannoli, but we had a lunch of fried calamari and "frito misto", right out of Italy and then a Pizza Quattro Fromaggio--just a small bite to tide us over you know. 

And today we went to Harvard.

I have always wanted to see Harvard.  Not go there, just see it.  I had always believed Cambridge to be some distance from Boston, but it's right here!  In fact, Harvard is only 7 1/2 miles from the Seaport Hotel!  A mere 25 minute Uber ride from the hotel even while dealing with the rather hideous Boston traffic.

Our Uber driver, while not a Hahvahd man himself, was most knowledgeable about the campus and the town and dropped us off at the Harvard Museum of Natural History which the Duck tour guide had recommended.  We didn't want to necessarily go to it, but as long as we were there we went in and wended our way through a warren of rooms filled with dinosaur bones, human skulls, a working bee hive (the bees are lured into it somehow through a clear pipe that is vented to the outside), and an endless array of dead and formaldahyded creatures in jars or pinned onto boards that rather freaked me out.  Bats, mice, birds, insects large and small--they gave me the willies.

So we made fairly short shrift of the Museum and, on the advice of a very kind and loquacious docent type lady we left by the back door and walked straight down Quincy Street and into Harvard Yard which is the original part of the campus.  Surrounding the Yard is Harvard Square which is a bustling town within Cambridge filled with businesses, shops, restaurants, and of course churches, University buildings and historical sites.  If you kept walking you would reach the Charles River.  Harvard Business School sits on the other side, but we didn't make it that far.  

The campus is endlessly fascinating, beautiful, filled with interesting people, buildings and events.  There were several groups of well dressed and mannerly teenagers, all Asian, touring the campus, no doubt planning on attending in a few years.  There were kiosks dotted here and there where notices could be posted, a couple of which are posted below for your edification.  It ain't John Harvard's Harvard anymore. 

As we wandered through the Yahd, we saw excitement building and sure enough, our hopes were fulfilled: a demonstration was happening!  We had seen a few people carrying placards with vague statements like "support the strike", but no clue as to what the strike was about.   

Lovely fall colors and beautiful old buildings.  And the people weren't too weird, believe it or not.  Not like Berkeley...

No comment...

Ditto...

The magnificent Widener Library with determined Korean potential students in the foreground.  We walked up the wide steps and into the building but you couldn't enter the actual library without an ID card.  The next picture pays tribute to the Library's benefactor and namesake which was in the front lobby.  Such serendipity that we had just come from the Titanic graveyard in Halifax.  Widener wasn't buried in Halifax of course.

Below is a not-so-hot picture of the folks on the lawn gathered around in support of "the strike".  But no speech, no soapbox, no information.  So I walked up to a Hispanic couple sitting more to the back who were holding a sign, told them we were visitors and politely asked if they would tell us what was going on.  

 What was going on was a food services strike.  The dining room workers, dishwashers and cooks, cafeteria servers in the dining halls and dorms--all striking for better health care. The food services union had organized the strike. Tom asked the couple if Obama Care hadn't provided that and they gave him an emphatic no.  We talked for ten minutes or so--the couple was from Peru--and one interesting thing they said was that Harvard was careful to keep them both at 27 hours, i.e., part time, which is what many small private businesses are excoriated for as a ploy to keep people from getting their rightful insurance. But the amazing thing is that the woman expressed dismay about the students!  She said that they knew and loved their students, some of whom had food allergies or special dietary needs, and who would be providing for them now?  While I suspect that the starving Harvard students will still manage to eat, I wonder how these hard-working Peruvian immigrants will make ends meet.    

But on a more pleasant note, Tom and I did manage to eat, and here are the dozen (a whole dozen!) oysters that I had for lunch--after a bowl of the best clam chowder ever, crammed with clams, potatoes, vegetables and accompanied by home-made "saltines"--little crispy buttery oyster crackers bearing no resemblance to the hexogonal horrors we normally get.  There were some left and I am snacking on them with my glass of wine as I write this.  Life is good.

A mountain of the best French fries in the world--just like dear old Dad used to make.  Perspective makes that beautiful lobster roll look small but it was loaded with lumps of lobster, claw as well as tail, and Tom didn't even ask to share my oysters, although I had a couple of bites of the lobster.

We ended the day with a visit to the Kennedy Museum, making it the fourth presidential Museum I have visited.  The setting is gorgeous--behind this front facade is a spider web of steel rods which overlook the Harbor and the inside has all the expected interesting public and personal stuff about JFK that one would expect.  When we reached the small dark corridor that depicted the assassination and its aftermath on recurring tiny black and white TV screens, I couldn't help an overwhelming emotion and inexplicable tears recalling that terrible time. The face of the beautiful Jackie behind the dark veil but whose eyes radiated grief and despair chokes me up just thinking about it.  

There was one room devoted to presidential gifts, including a hideous gold and glass necklace given to Jackie by the Prime Minister of Sudan which she must have rolled her eyes over. Gaudy and cheap looking (though pure gold), it is unimaginable that Jackie would have ever worn it with her Chanel suits or Oleg Cassini ball gowns.  But the little evening bag above is quite beautiful--studded with diamonds, emeralds and rubies...but understated...  A gift from the King of Morocco.  Impeccable taste.  Of course, as we know presidential families aren't allowed to keep any of the gifts after leaving the White House so it's a moot point.

Have truer words ever been spoken?