Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Boston: Fenway Park , Harvard, & China Town

On Wednesday, we started our day with a tour of Fenway Park. It was kind of weird walking there from the T station, because it wasn't super easy to spot. We were just walking and all of a sudden there were Red Sox flags hanging from a building, and we were like, "Oh, this is the stadium."

Spencer & Sydney outside Fenway Park.

We learned some fun facts about the curse of the Bambino, the Green Monster, and the single red seat in a sea of green seats (where a napping Yankee's fan was hit in the head with a fly ball).

Sydney the blue chairs, and the seat flipped up and set her off kilter. She started screaming, so we gave her fruit snacks (which she requested about every 15 minutes on this trip) to cheer her up. Totally worked.

After lunch, we took the T to Harvard. Spencer was holding Sydney, and her tired little eyes just slowly started closing. When we got there, she was dead to the world.

Luckily they had these chairs all over Harvard Yard, so we snagged a few and took a little nap.

When she woke up, she had a stinky diaper. We walked into a random building and found the bathrooms in the basement, but of course there wasn't a changing station. She was cracking me up that whenever she saw someone walk into the bathroom she'd ask me, "A change a bum?" I took her into the hallway to try to find a secluded area, but I only found a table by the vending machines. We didn't see another soul until I started wiping her poopy bum, and then a maintenance man walked by us. Naturally.

We walked around the campus a bit, then did a student guided tour, which we ended up bailing on prematurely. But we did have a genius Harvard student define big words for us on the tour, you know, words like "co-ed" (inside joke).

Then we attempted to go canoeing on the Charles river, but that didn't work out. So we just opted for a picture by the water, and decided to head to Chinatown.

Our only previous experience with Chinatown was in San Francisco, which is totally awesome. So I had to laugh at the short conversation Spencer had with a lady when we emerged from the T and saw only regular looking buildings all around us:

Spencer: "Um, excuse me. Where's Chinatown?"

Lady: (looking confused) "You're in it."

Turns out Chinatown in Boston is like two dirty side streets that smell like garbage, with a bunch of restaurants scattered throughout. After walking through the entire thing (in like 3 minutes), we decided to have dinner at a place called Empire Garden. After going inside, we walked up some stairs, and for a second I felt like I was in the movie Big Trouble in Little China. When we met the hostess at the top of the stairs, she took us into a massive theater-turned-restaurant (like Playhouse Square style theater with the ornate ceiling and everything). And we were the only people there. Although we were a little nervous about the place being completely empty, we actually ended up having a pretty good meal. Plus, I didn't feel too pressured to keep Sydney quiet.

When we were leaving, we decided to take the elevator back downstairs. We got in, pushed the button, and then the doors shut. We heard a few weird sounds, then doors opened to the same floor. We had already been giggling about what a bizarre experience it was to eat there, but we laughed even harder as we tried to slyly get out of the elevator and take the stairs instead without the hostess noticing.
We ended the night watching a free orchestra concert at the Hatch Shell right along the river. They were supposed to be playing Beethoven's 5th symphony, but the first 30 minutes or so were arias that didn't really hold our interest. Never really been a fan of opera... so we walked along the river and let Sydney run around before heading back to our hotel.

2 comments:

Jared and Barbara said...

Wow what a vacation! I totally remeber that movie Big Trouble in Little China Town and I can picture Spencer laughing at the whole event. Sydney is so beautiful. I love the shot with her napping on Spencer's chest! Love you guys! I am excited to see you.

Barbara

Tamra said...

I love that picture too, Spencer looks like he makes a pretty good mattress.