Day 24 - Grand Tour of the East Coast

Day 24
Grand Tour of the East Coast

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The 24th day of my trip was something of an anticlimax after seeing all the great historical sights the day before. It was perhaps on par with my last day in Friedrichshafen: I had seen what I had come to see, so the day's discoveries were of a lesser nature.

After finally getting away from Bethany's flat, I headed to Harvard to see the place in the sunshine. I stopped at the tiny Semitic Museum, which occupies one room in a building across the street from the Peabody Museum. The exhibit was small and easy to digest, and I enjoyed it.

For a while longer I wandered aimlessly around the campus, especially the walled-off area known as "Harvard Yard." (Except for utility vehicles, cars are forbidden inside. So the Massachusetts accent cliché "Pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd" is inaccurate.) I'm not sure what I expected to find there, but I met only disappointment. C'mon, Willy! Seventeen billion dollar endowment aside, it's just a college campus. The place is for students, not this restless wandering soul several rungs down on the socioeconomic ladder.

Having decided that I didn't especially like Harvard, I forsook the place and rode the T all of the way to South Station, where I initially arrived in Boston one week earlier. The Boston Tea Party occurred somewhere in that area. (Landfilling has expanded Boston considerably since 1774, so the original site is surely landlocked by now.) Nearby is a museum supposed to reopen someday soon about the Tea Party, featuring a replica of one of the ships. Of course the ship is gone to an undisclosed location, so there's nothing to see. I kept walking along the waterfront until I ended up with a good vantage point of Logan airport. Traffic was light, so I quickly grew tired of waiting for planes.

I wanted to see Trinity Church, which is supposedly some amazing building. I rode the Green Line thither, only to find that the church charges admission for sightseers. Blasphemy! I had already seen plenty of amazing buildings for free, so I really didn't care to pay money, especially in a church.

This disappointment sapped my remaining touring energy. Before returning to Cambridge, I sketched the dome of the Statehouse. I messed up one of the curves, but everything else turned out fine.

Sketch of the Massachusetts Statehouse.

I was impressed by a strange feeling a few times during the day. It was hard to identify, but I think it was the feeling that I had travelled enough and the time had come to go home.

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Day 23
Charlestown Navy Yard

Grand Tour

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Day 25
Walden Pond