City of Boston- "same to same" but different

This is a travelog of our Day 1 of Boston touring in mid August. We visited Harvard, MIT and Quincy market and drove back to Canton. 

The drive to and from Canton in itself was quite an adventure. It is one thing to drive in peak traffic in bay area and a completely different thing to drive in Boston. The drivers are very unforgiving if they give you barely enough space to change lanes and you take a few extra milliseconds to move over. You get honked. My sis seems to have become immune to this and has also joined the herd there over time. 

A picture of me at Harvard square after 20 years. Cannot find the old picture from the half dozen shoe boxes filled with printed photos from the pre-digital age. 

Then came a paid tour of the University. Our tourguide was a junior at Harvard. When I asked her what she was majoring in, she told me that her major is "something something in something something and also somethingelse somethingelse in somethingelse somethingelse" and the words she used were all longer than something and somethingelse. I was like "whatever happened to things that could be described in one or at the most two words?"

She did do a good job of taking us through the campus and explaining campus culture, which famous person lived in which dorm etc. etc. She even went over admission procedures, some statistics in student population by demographic, superstitions of Harvard students (which says a lot) and other weird customs like running naked after last day of exams, pissing on statues, etc. etc. Those did not impress the four kids we had in our group and they were asking us "do we really have to go to college? do all colleges do it? can I go to a different college than this?" .. you get the idea!

We also got to watch some rich prospective Chinese supermodel students and a photoshoot.. Then it was time to eat our packed lunch on the lawns of Harvard. It was a beautiful and pleasant day. So we had a nice time in the lawn. They had filled it with chairs so that prospective students and the visiting parents could hang out there. 

Then off we went to MIT. The first piece of advice to new travelers is "keep your car parked at Harvard and take a cab to MIT or use public transport". Why? There is no freaking parking anywhere near MIT. we wasted an hour trying to find parking and the few lots there were all full (we were willing to pay 2x or 3x for it given we did not have much time left, but nothing was there). Finally we managed to find something and walked over to the MIT entrance. It was impressive. There is a separate post with HDR pictures.. so not posting those here.

We were about to go wander through that building when a lady from the visitor center told us that their tours were for kids who are in last two years of high school or college Juniors and seniors and their parents. Our kids were too young (we translated that as "we as parents were too young" and were happy) to appreciate that tour. Instead she said "we have a newly renovated MIT science museum which hopes to inspire young kids like this to take up science and engineering. why don't you go there?"

It was totally worth it. We walked another 15-20 minutes to get there. It was quite hot by then. The kids were tired but once they saw all the exhibits, they started playing, making measurements, watching videos, exploring things. It was a treat to watch the kids do all that. 

They watched a video of this Tuna robot that swims with real tuna. They were impressed. Once they saw all the hard engineering that went into it, they had pained expressions in their faces. I told them "using those iPhones and iPads has spoilt you guys. There is a lot of real work that goes behind what you are so used to getting". They said "yeah. yeah.. please don't start again with .. in those days when I was a kid.. dialogue". I rolled my eyes and moved on.

There were a lot of fun exhibits there that really appeal to kids. Holograms, experiments on strobe photography.. I still remember the NatGeo issue that was all about Doc Edgerton. They had a whole area for his photos. It was great!

Here is the little one doing some experiment or other. 

and for some strange reason "Lady Gaga".. with Jr. promptly posing in front of the photo.

Once we were done with the science museum, the kids were hungry. We wanted to go to Quincy market and get them something to eat.

If parking is hard to find near MIT, it is much more difficult at Quincy market. So we wasted another 30 mintues driving round and round that area. Finally we dropped off San with the kids and circled around while they all got some gelato. They got back into the cars and we drove back as though they got into some getaway cars. The gelato was very good but not exceptional. We have to visit this place another time when we have an extra day or two in Boston. 

Driving in Boston, with a GPS is still tricky than driving in most places in the US. That was our lesson from day 1 !!