Reunion Trip - Boston

 May 12-13th:  Arrived in Boston last night, water taxied to the Seaport Hotel in South Boston, and had dinner at Legal Seafood (here called Legal Harborside).  Today, we had a light breakfast and coffee at Flour Bakery, walked to South Station to check out transit and load our senior "Charlie Cards," and then rode the MBTA to the Waban Station to meet up with Mary and Subra Suresh.  They treated us to lunch in their new home.  Subra toured us around his impressive collection of plaques, memorabilia, and photographs - he has been to the White House several times (awards and conversations with Obama and Biden), has lots of photos of his honors for his scientific/engineering career, his many distinguished positions (head of the NSF, President of Carnegie Mellon, and NTU (Singapore)) and for being on several boards of directors, and has mementos from his extensive travels.

After our visit, Mary drove us to the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, leaving us to walk around a very beautiful cemetery and enormous greenspace, with peak flowering from pink and white dogwood trees.  From there, we walked to Harvard Square (to the nearest MBTA station) along the Charles River.  Crew teams were practicing on the river and the pathway was full of walkers, joggers, and bikers.  We stopped off for drinks at Grafton Street Pub in Cambridge, after which we caught the T back to South Station.  We picked up takeout dinner (salad, sandwich, & chips) at the station, and walked back to the hotel to eat.  

Here are the photos for these days:

View from on board water taxi.

Dinner at Legal Seafood.

Walking past the Boston Tea Party Museum and Ship.

Boston Common.

The Public Garden - next door to the Common.

The Public Garden pond .....

with its Swan boats.

Mary and Subra.

Kitchen.

The "new" house.

Some notable occupants - Fannie Farmer, Felix Frankfurter, Buckminster Fuller, Isabella Stewart Gardner, Curt Gowdy, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Winslow Homer, Julia Ward and Samuel Howe, Edwin H. Land, Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. and Jr., Henry W. Longfellow, Bernard Malamud, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and B.F. Skinner.

A curious memorial.

The dogwoods.

The view from atop the Washington Tower in the cemetery.

An unusual building.

The Washington Tower atop the high point in the cemetery.

This was engraved on the "sphinx" statue below.

Civil War Memorial by Martin Milmore, commissioned by Dr. Jacob Bigelow, 1872, representative of "combined ideas of beauty and strength."

The Bigelow Chapel.

The Halcyon Pond, with Mary Baker Eddy Memorial (founder of the Christian Science), restored 1999.

A Great Blue Heron, sitting quietly in a tree next to the pond above.

ENJOY!