You can read about my other adventures in Boston here:
Yard House
Blue Hills
Day Trip to Ogunquit Maine
A few weeks ago, Eric and I both had an afternoon free from work. It was a little too hot to do anything outside, so we decided to check out the Harvard Museum of Natural History which has been on our "to do" list forever. We took the T to Harvard Square, which I think is a "must see" for people visiting Boston. Eric and I tried a restaurant called Oggi Gourmet which was a casual sandwich and pizza place for lunch. Here is my pizza, yum that crust was delicious...
After lunch we walked through the Harvard campus. When I was younger, I took having Harvard fifteen minutes away for granted and didn't find anything that remarkable about it. I think at least ten people that I graduated high school with went there, so I didn't see it as really that interesting. Then, my best bud from Australian came to visit and on her top 3 list of things she needed to see in Boston was Harvard. That's when I realized, it's actually kind of CRAZY how close I live to such a famous place. Sure, my pink sunglasses make it pretty clear that I myself am not a Harvard student, but it's still fun to visit.
After a short walk, we arrived at the museum and immediately found a giant dinosaur that made Eric look small.
There was a wide variety of animals from throughout history in each of the different rooms.
I was impressed to see how HUGE the blue whale is. We study sea animals in kindergarten and many of my students have read about how large these whales are, but seeing the real size in person taking up the entire ceiling of a huge room is humbling.
After seeing all the animals, we went to a room with a crazy collection of rocks. This lead to a whole conversation between Eric and I about collecting rocks as children. God our future kids are going to be so cool. Seriously, I was a pretty serious rock collector at one point. I actually cleared off an entire shelf on my bookcase so that I could display my best rocks, and then I put a reading light that clipped to the end of the bookshelf so it would even have a spotlight on it. The kid in me kind of loved the rock room...
Before, we left we had to check out the glass flower exhibit. I've heard a lot about this and it didn't disappoint. I have no idea how people do this, but it's pretty amazing...
We finished the trip with a visit to the gift shop. I got my kiddos a kids encyclopedia of sea life, and a cute little shark stuffed animal.
Overall, quite a successful trip to Harvard Square and a cool museum. I only wish I stopped for Ben and Jerry's on the way home.
Do you have any favorite museums near you? Have you ever been to Harvard? What's the most famous college near you?
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Lol. I love the story about your rock collection w/ the book light to really display it! It could be worse - my brother had a huge BUG COLLECTION. Gag!! It was so gross (but also sort of cool).
ReplyDeleteI have never been to Harvard but I would definitely want to check out the campus as it's a college I definitely am in awe of. I'd have to wear my glasses that day and try to pose like an academic. Ha.
There are no famous colleges around me, actually. Or not that I consider famous. In general it seems like most of the famous colleges are out east!
And I don't have a favorite museum either, which is lame as I am sure there are some good ones. I am just terrible about going to museums in Minneapolis!
Fun! I've actually never explored harvard either. Hm.. or Cambridge as a whole. It's definitely on my bucket list when I return home!
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like a fun afternoon! You guys always keep so busy. When my Eric and I have a random afternoon off we like to lay around and be lazy usually (like yesterday). haha. We have a museum here but I've never visited it, the only museums I've visited actually are ones we went to when we were on our Europe trip!
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