the rest of boston

this is it, folks! the last of the boston posts. finally, right? see the others here and here and here.

on monday we woke up and took the train in to boston to boston commons. ryan, who has been to new york, says the commons are like new york's central park except not at all because central park is so much more amazing. i don't know because i haven't been. i'm just repeating what i was told. and i'm probably repeating it wrong.

fun fact about the commons: it used to be where they hung people. or punished them. so, that's fun.

ANYWAY, we were there to meet our tour guide. a guy who dresses up like a colonial guy and pretends he's from the late eighteenth century. so when you use your cell phone he's amazed. isn't that fun? ryan wanted to stand in the back and listen. i wanted to stand in the front and ask questions. there was conflict. i think it showed the type of students we were. i totally sat in the front and asked lots of questions (teacher's pet? yeah) and ryan sat in the back.

the guy was pretty animated, as you can tell. i have a lot more photos but i didn't want a blog that's so clearly about me to suddenly become all about him, you know?

i did not take any pictures of our walking tour because i wanted to hear what the guy had to say and i didn't want to get any of the people from our tour in the pictures (sorry people we toured with). so, nothing was photographed until we got to faneuil hall, a very relevant place. the link will take you to its wikipedia article. 

right across fanuiel hall is quincy market, where you can shop for over priced items and watch street performers, including some pretend red coats and these acrobats. they were pretty funny. and much more legit than the santa monica street performers we see when we go down to the 3rd street. they, of course, asked ryan to help with their show. ryan must have had 'tourist"tattooed on his forehead, he got targeted often.

then we wandered for a bit and i took lots of photos of the city:

the subway. i love the subway. i love people watching on the subway.

harvard mailboxes.

hardvard campus. (or "hah-vahd yah-d")

us in a window. ryan loved it.

when leaving hardvard:

when entering:

not pictured: an AWESOME bookshop across from the campus. no pictures because we were too busy burying ourselves in books.

a park. spent a lot more time here people watching, including some modern dancers who were playing some sort of modern dancing game. completely entertaining. as we left they applauded heartily. i'm not sure what that meant.

funny story: it was at this point that we'd been walking all day and i, being an idiot, brought only sandals and was no feeling pretty achy and exhausted. especially since ryan is like this sort of rabid tourist who thinks that our trip is some sort of race and that we need to see as much of wherever we are as posible or everything we love will die. and i'm sort of the type that's quality over quantity, you know? we pretty much took the ryan road of seeing boston which is why we saw so flippin' much this trip, and at this point i was exhausted. and ryan really wanted to go to this church and we're walking and walking and. . .walking and i say, "how much further do you think we have to go?" and ryan looks around and points to a church steeple waaaaay in the distace and says, "i think that's it."

i nearly mutnied. just as i opened my mouth to do so, i looked to my right and saw a european chocolate shop advertising frozen hot chocolate. i've been dying to try frozen hot chocolate since i heard of such a thing about a year ago (it's a slow death). so i shut my mouth and walked in. it. was. delicious.

afterwards we walked to the church. it was having some sort of seminar and we couldn't go in. lame. luckily, the library was right across the street so we went in there. and i love books, so that was just fine with me.

tuesday was our last day. we had audrey and hernan's wedding, of course (pictures here). it was beautiful. and wonderful. it is one of my favorite things to witness people i love and who love each other marry. and the time spent with audrey's family was wonderful also. they are such good people. we loved getting to know them.

after the wedding, we went to concord to walden pond. we were going to emerson's house and to louisa may alcott's house also, but ryan didn't want to walk through a bunch of old houses, so we went to Walden Pond instead. it's not as quiet as you might think, having been turned into some sort of. . .well, pond. people swim there. lots of people. including a mother who was caught calling her child "re-tahded". we managed to get away from the people and find some quiet in the beauitful woods surrounding the pond. everything was green. and beautiful.

a statue of thoreau. being disgraced by me and ryan's cellphone. sorry thoreau! but really, when a statue is simply holding his hand out like that, you're sort of begging for some smart aleck to come along and ruin everything.

me. proving my inability to take a normal picture.

where the home was built.

people come and add rocks to an enormous pile near the homestead.

things to do now that i am home:

-read 1776

-read walden (read it when i was too young to appreciate it, so it doesn't count)

-go on another trip with ryan SOON because that was wonderful. and the kids didn't even really miss us.

-go running more. because those boston folk are RUNNERS and they all look awesome and i look. . .soft.

-book more weddings outside of the LA and Ventura counties. traveling for this wedding was SO. MUCH. FUN.

hernan and audrey, THANK YOU for getting married!