Thursday, July 30, 2009

Stuff in Boston, like Giant Freaky Baby Heads.

So Violet and I are in spending a week bumming around New England and today was our only full day in Boston. I love Boston.

We slept through the rain this morning and then got up and went to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. It is one of those museums that is basically just some dead rich person’s house. I love these kinds of places. It is apparently okay to be a horder as long as you horde Greek statuary.

Anyway, it was a wonderful and beautiful museum. Here is their website:gardnermuseum.org

One of the cool things about the museum is that it was built to look like a Venetian palazzo, so it has this tall and beautiful courtyard in the center. You’re not allowed to take pictures inside the museum, but Violet snuck this one on her camera phone (which she was supposed to have turned off, she's so bad):



One of the other interesting things about it, in 1990 thieves stole several paintings and sketches, including Rembrandt’s The Sea of Galilee. Well they still have the picture frames hanging on the walls, empty. In the spot where four Degas sketches were hanging, the nails are still there, waiting patiently. That's pretty cool.

This is The Sea of Galilee, if you see it, email that website I just posted!
If you show up with it on Antique Roadshow the FBI will be all over you.

The museum is down in an area of Boston called the Fenway, it is kinda pretty - Northeastern University is down there - and we wandered through the Kelleher Rose Garden (there are more kinds or roses in the world than are dreamt of in all of your philosophy) and then we stumbled across the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and while it might be a world class museum, it has creepy, giant baby heads in front of it! Here is a picture of one:


Freakish, right?

So then we went up to Trinity Church, which is just amazing. It really is something that you should see. A hundred years ago (or so the literature says) it was considered one of the ten most (architecturally) important buildings in America. It was still on the list ten years ago too. It is one of those places where that pictures can’t do justice to. Like this one:


It was too dark inside. Sorry about that. Here is a picture of the outside:


Then we walked around the Boston Public Library, which is a lot like the New York Public Library, but smaller (you could say this about Boston itself too).

Then we went on over to Harvard, it looks like Hogwarts, but with more brick. A lot more brick.

Then over to a fun and fancy part of Boston called the North End, it is the kind of place with a million Italian restaurants and dessert places with lines out onto the sidewalk.

Then back to the hotel (which I got on Hotwire for an outrageously awesome price).

Tomorrow we will ride the train down to Brown to bum around. Pray for good weather.
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