Duck tour, Museum of Science, Cape cod and the Plymouth Plantation

On our second day of the Boston trip, we visited one place. The Boston Museum of Science. It probably needs a few days to visit this thingy in all its vastness but we did what we could. We started the day with a "duck tour" of Boston that leaves from the Museum Parking lot.

It was a little over an hour of seeing the old Boston landmarks in and around the Museum from the amphibious vehicle (most notably city hall, trinity church and the shopping district) followed by a ride on the Charles river for 30 minutes. Given we went early in the morning, it was a nice ride on land and water. The kids got to sit at the wheel and drive the duck! It was a highlight for them..

The museum is similar to the California Academy of Sciences, with differnt wings for different areas. The big difference was the Pixar area. The kids and adults just loved this exhibit. 

The monster fans in our group were thrilled! 

There were also many exploratory areas and the kids actually learned a lot in one day. There were chicks hatching from eggs in front of us, things to measure on our body from heart rate to the arch of our feet! You could send all the data from your experiments to a site using your arm bracelet tag. It was impressive!

The little one seems to be all into science. I know things change over time.. but hoping this one keeps the light in her eyes alive for science.  She raised her hand to be volunteer for every experiment and enjoyed it.

Here she is moving the starry nights painting by shaking her hands on a setup that used Kinect to bring motion to the famous painting.. 

The kids had to use rubber bands on a frame with a cloth to create a surface that would bounce a ball the highest.. it had a testing Jig to test the height of the bouncing ball. They had stats from every bounce by day, by week with records on a computer. The kids were all set to beat the record but they lost. It was a great experience for them to see how their theories worked or not when applied in practice.

Then, there was the bed of nails, lightning bolts, animal and bird exhibits, shell collections, a nano science exhibit, an endless list to cover for a single day!

The only downside to this place is that the food shops close at 5:30 or so. We were hungry and tired after all that walking and had planned to eat at the museum before driving back. There was nothing to eat. So we ordered pizza, picked it up on our way home and watched the kids finish pizza like never before. 

It was a day well spent and the kids though tired, were very happy and excited and still talking about some of the things they saw at bedtime!

That was day 2. On day 3, we left for Cape Cod, bright and early. We made a good decision to drive as far as possible when traffic was low and drive back towards Canton and cover the vista points.

Turned out to be a great decision because the traffic had gotten much worse over three hours. 

We went all the way to Provincetown. Walked around the place and the pier and started driving back. 

The plan was to cover a few famous lighthouses and also spend time at the beach.

we made a small miscalculation on the beach part. It was Noon when we hit the beach. It was a very hot day and we could not even set foot on the sand. It was that hot. The kids went into the water for a few minutes but the rest of us could not sit there for long. So we packed up and headed for a quick lunch in the shade in the parking lot. One thing that was new to us here ? We cannot go park at the beach. You park 2 miles away and a shuttle bus takes you the beach every 20 minutes or so. There are long lines for this shuttle. So the wait could be 40 minutes before you get back to parking! 

After lunch, we went back towards Canton with a quick stop at the Plymouth (Plimoth) plantation museum. It was to commemorate the whole Indians meeting and helping the first settlers thanksgiving thing.. Someday there will be a musum to commemorate the settlers screwing the Indians was my thought. Then again, history is always written by the victorious, not the virtuous. Cynicism aside, the museum was a great attempt to recreate events and give a glimpse of what life was like 400 years ago in this place.

The kids saw how boats were made out of tress to go across the river..

grind corn, see how the Indians lived.. 

play games the Indian children played.. 

walk through an Indian village.. 

with folks in costume (and real Indian tribesmen) 

and English actors and actresses who recreate life on the village. They talk like it is 1650AD when you ask them questions. The kids were amused. They kept looking at us and asking "she is kidding right? she is just role playing right?"

This woman was challenged by the little one to see if she will slip up and make a single mistake to acknowledge we are in the current century, but NO! The conversation went on for 15 minutes and she was locked into 1600's. The kids were impressed with that.

That and a private birthday celebration pretty much sums up our trip. Will post the HDR photos soon. 

It was a whirlwind trip but like any of our other whirlwind tours (have started asking ourselves if there is any other way to tour any place), we managed to cover a lot in three days and come back just in time to start the back to school routine. 

This was exactly a month ago. Already feels like ages ago!

The kids are growing up fast. It is one thing that grandparent visits are few and far between. We don't even get to see our siblings often enough. My siblings are in Chennai and Boston. Wife's siblings are in Melbourne and Seattle. Family reunions are getting to be a rarity. Really looking forward to my Sashtiabdhapoorthy(turn 60) or Jr.'s wedding (whichever is sooner) to see everyone under one roof!

That is a lot of forward looking.. but cest la vie!

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 !!

Boston beckons..

Before school started, we had a four day window to visit my sister and family in Boston. We are spread all over the place. My parents with my brother in Chennai, India.. my sisters family on the east coast and us in the west coast. It is similar story on my wife's side. Her sisters family is in Melbourne and her brother is in Seattle.  So reunions and face to face meetings with family are rare. Entire family get togethers on any one side of the family are rarer. 

The best part of the trip for me was to see my sister and her hubby in their natural habitat, happy and smiling and watching the kids play together with their cousins. For the most part I was always roaming around, camera in hand.. 

It was a quick trip but we got some sightseeing done. Will do a separate blog post for some of the visits. 

Day 1: we visited Harvard. Tried to walk around ourselves. Got tired of waiting behind this Chinese group (the girls were all dressed like supermodels and there were cameramen with lighting , reflectors etc. taking pictures of them at every statue). Someone in the crowd told us they were "prospective students". 

San asked the cameramen nicely if they will move on so we could take a picture. He said 2 minutes and it went on for 15. So we decided to take the "official tour" with a student tour guide. Having wandered through Harvard multiple times many many moons ago and having danced in two of their ballrooms.. thought we could just wander around.. the paid tour was not bad. The student who gave the tour managed to keep it entertaining. 

Plus, we got our turn at taking pictures.. 

Initially the kids were all eager to touch this statue. Later they learned that this was the most "pissed on" statue in the universe and were running to find water and hand sanitizer!

Then we went to MIT and their science museum. 

Day2 was completely spent on a "duck tour" around downtown Boston and a trip on the Charles river followed by the Museum of Science. This was one great museum for the kids. Some highlights were the guy inside a cage getting struck repeatedly by lightning from a Van de Graff generator and a bed of nails..

Naturally, the Yogi had to volunteer for the bed of nails. 

Day 3 was spent celebrating my nephews birthday.. we also managed to go to Cape Cod and visit the Plimoth plantation museum. This reminded us of Ballarat in Australia. There were scenes that transported us to the 1600's like the one below.. 

Did I already say the best part was seeing my sister after a long time? I see her in my daughters face every day to the point where sometimes I call Jr. by my sisters name because she looks like a replica of my sis when she was the same age. When she is sitting on the ground and looks up with her iris on the top without raising her head up.. it is like watching my sister!

Jr. is a bridge between the genes of the two women on either side of her. Given they are all November borns.. it gets interesting from a tempramental stand point when they are talking to each other.

Moving on to other things.. 

We thoroughly enjoyed the trip to the many lighthouses in Cape Cod area.. and the best pic that stood out on the quick scroll through the downloaded pictures was this one.. 

We were smiling throughout this trip. No fights. No daddy getting lost on freeways in a new place. Found restrooms when we wanted them to appear while on the road. A peaceful trip after a long time. 

When I get a chance, will edit more pictures and post a travelog on Harvard, MIT, Cape Cod, the Museum of science and the Plimoth plantation.

A visit to Ballarat

The first time I knew that a place called Ballarat existed was in 10th grade. It was mentioned in a Sherlock Holmes story. All I knew in those pre Wikipedia days was that Ballarat was a place where lot of gold was found and many folks got rich in the "gold rush" in Australia. 

We did visit the place once in 2004 on our first ever Australia trip. Jr. was too small to remember anything and the little one wasn't born yet. So on this trip, we did an all day trip to Ballarat. They had also added a light and sound effects show in the night in the recent years and we stayed for that. We left Melbourne after breakfast and returned at midnight on what was definitely a day well spent.

Ballarat has a few streets preserved in the Victorian era. We have visited a similar gold rush town in California a few years ago called Columbia. Ballarat is a large scale version of this. There are folks walking down the streets (all actors) in ancient clothes, stores that sell ice creams of a distant era, buildings and facades that look like sets but are for real, candle makers, horse buggies, bowling alleys that take you back in time.. 

It is a wonderful experience trying to connect to a past and this place does give you that experience in a very nice way. The guy who did the musket firing is apparently a Ballroom dancer who does this as a part time job or so he told me.  All the actors and store folks who do demonstrations are nice and polite which makes you wonder where our level of politeness has gone with time! 

The sound and light show was interesting. The  quality of it was not bad, but it needs to be edited a little better to avoid long pauses between acts. It was not as good as a Hollywood production but a great attempt at getting close to one. It was interesting for one reason. I never knew that the Australian independence movement of sorts was started in Ballarat by the miners trying to get rights from the British authority. Never knew anything about the "Blood on the southern cross"! It was a really great history lesson!

The kids did enjoy the light and sound show. But what fascinated them the most was panning for gold. They got really furstrated after 20 minutes of hard work trying to find a spec of gold. They threw their instruments down and walked back disappointed. 

They were treated instead to a museum on Soverign hill where large gold nuggets were on display. Seeing all that gold made the girls happy. It is only a question of time before they grow up and seeing is not going to be enough. If my father in law is any guide, I should start robbing banks soon so in a few years the girls can have all the jewelry they want.

On an entirely side note, we had to wait for 4 hours between the morning tours and the light show at night. So we decided to go around "Downtown Ballarat" which boasted some really old buildings, a great town center space, 4 Thai restaurants, Thai kickboxing exercise places, Thai travel places etc.. within 2 blocks (let's just say the Thai's have taken over Ballarat or so it appears) and a Pizza Hut right next to Soverign hill with large pizza's for 5 Aussie dollars including breadsticks and soda!  Still cannot believe how good that pizza was and how cheap it was!

Here is Ballarat in pictures.. 

 

Mud roads with only horse carriages going through... a Bowling lane with wood balls that for some strange reason reminds me of Angelina Jolie (hey.. different things bring different memories to the foreground!)

Plates and other metal ware made in front of your eyes using methods from the late 1800's! 

The nice lady who poses for us (guessing she is also a ballroom dancer? like the guy with the musket)

Ladies in costume.. everywhere..

Candles, soaps, candies.. all made old school way, in front of your eyes. It was interesting for everyone.

Horse buggies ! They also had a studio where the entire family could pick costumes from that era and take a group portrait.. but it was booked for the day and we missed an opportunity. 

Clouds that made the place even more interesting..

Buildings that were surreal

and did we mention Gold! Gold! Gold! Had to get that photo as a mild sepia tone..

The kids were so sincere in their search for gold.. all of 20 minutes till they figured out that the miners were all idiots for wasting their time searching!

They had a show where a single bar of gold worth 160k $ was melted and poured into a mold. It was a nice demonstration of gold metallurgy. Brought back memories of sitting on the gallery seats writing notes in Prof. PM Prasad's class! 

For some strange reason, they had a bunch of domestic birds and animals on one side to try and show how things were hundred years ago.. The alpha turkey went and did a display for us..

but what caught my attention was the sparrows. There were thousands of them everywhere. In the vents, inside the little buildings. Looked like a sparrow invasion of sorts in the place. They were fearless too. One of them ate ribbon pakoda and thenkuzhal right from my hands!

Then we went across the street to Soverign Hill and the gold museum. It was a place with a view!

both outside and inside

Some lucky bloke kicks the ground in frustration and finds this! Must have been something in those days with gold found a few inches below the surface!

These things are the size of my head or slightly larger.. so you can imagine the girls getting all wide eyed!

An old hotel in downtown Ballarat.. 

and a more recent statue in the city center area.

The place seems to be getting a big time makeover. My BIL was giving me a lesson on how Australia is trying to bring up little cities as development hubs. IBM is going to be there big time in Ballarat apparently. Guessing that their cafeteria will have at least one Thai restaurant.

The place was beautiful. The stones were screaming for a HDR picture..

There were no pictures allowed in the sound and light show and that was a surprise given we are allowed to take all the photos we want in Universal studios. You will have to go experience that one for yourself.

If you visit Melbourne area, definitely worth a visit. Budget a day for Ballarat and the entire family will come home happy after experiencing something unique.

Tahquitz Canyon - Videoblog

Was struggling to edit these HD movies from the 5D. Now that we have a new laptop (courtesy daddy's workplace) with Windows 7 and a new free Windows Movie Maker, editing videos and adding captions is simple again.

Photoblog is here..

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