Boston Trip!

We had a great trip to Boston these past few days! We have been meaning to take a trip there for awhile and we finally made it. Ricardo's school was closed for a 4 day weekend so we took advantage of the time. It's truly amazing how 2 kids can turn a 5.5 hour drive into an 8 hour drive, but overall both kids did really well. Plus the road trip seems to have improved Thomas' extreme hatred for driving in the car, so that in itself is a win! We left on Thursday morning and stopped in New Haven, Connecticut for lunch and a self-guided tour around Yale to let the kids have a break from the car. Lunch was delicious sandwiches at a local eatery and our spur of the moment tour was ok. I didn't do too much planning for this part so we didn't really know exactly what the highlights of the campus were. We both kind of expected it to look just like it does on Gilmore Girls (which it doesn't), but it is beautiful and it we enjoyed a nice spring afternoon together.

We made it to Boston just after rush hour and spent the rest of the night enjoying dinner and chatting with our very gracious Brazilian hosts. Ricardo's family lived in Boston when he was very young and they still know some friends there. The people we ended up staying with were actually friends of a friend but they treated us like we were their family and we had a great time getting to know them. Russell is still talking about them now that we're home.

On Friday we headed downtown and enjoyed Boston Common and part of the Freedom Trail. We saw many beautiful old buildings and loved how well Boston preserves their history. The Freedom Trail is a red line on the ground that winds through the city to lead you to all of the historical sites. We wished that Philly did something similar. It was really neat. We eventually wound our way back to the park and enjoyed our lunch there. All of the food on our trip was so delicious! None of our meals disappointed!

In the afternoon we went to Harvard and had our own little tour with Ricardo's friend from ASDA who attends Harvard. She also went there for undergrad so she is basically the best tour guide you could ask for. This was probably one of our favorite parts of the trip. It was super interesting and we were able to go in some buildings with her that we wouldn't have been able to go in otherwise. It was 1,000,000x better than our self-guided tour of Yale (sorry Yale). Some interesting tidbits: if your parents make less than $60,000/yr, your entire Harvard education including living expenses is free! And if they make less than $180,000, you just have to pay 10% of their gross income and everything else is completely covered (undergrads only). We thought that was really cool. All of the freshmen are divided into houses and the inside of the houses look just like the Harry Potter Hogwarts houses. There are so many cool social aspects to attending Harvard- it really seems like an amazing experience, even beyond the obvious academics. We went inside one of the libraries which has a copy of a Gutenberg Bible and the library was absolutely beautiful. Thanks Helen for a great tour!

Here's our best attempt at a family picture next to John Harvard's statue:

We then headed a few blocks away to find the house Ricardo lived in as a little boy. He was excited to see that not much has changed.

...including the ice cream shop down the street. It was delicious, though maybe not worth the $25 we spent on a parking ticket because our meter ran out. Ooops...Actually, we were both surprised at the cost of the ticket. We thought it would be more.

This is where my pictures stop because I started to get lazy, but that night we had dinner with Ricardo's family friends at a Brazilian steakhouse. On Saturday we went to the harbor and enjoyed the Boston Children's Museum with some old Philly friends who moved to Boston. Our membership from our museum here got us 50% off there, which was neat. The location of the museum is really beautiful, though it was pretty cold and windy right there on the water. It is so much colder in Boston than it is in Philadelphia. I was surprised! We had lobster rolls and salmon burgers for lunch nearby and all decided lobster is overpriced, but we were still glad we had some seafood on the trip. I'm sad we forgot to get a picture with our friends, but we really enjoyed catching up with them!

We then headed to the North End and picked up some cannolis from the famous Mike's Pastry, where the workers literally work at lightning speed and the line still winds out the door. That place must make a killing, it is nuts. The Italian area of the city is so cute and we enjoyed driving around looking at all the shops. We skipped getting out this time because it was super crowded and we had a sleeping baby in the car. :) We originally planned to leave early Sunday so Ricardo could be back for his afternoon flight to Florida for job interviews, but in the end decided to leave Saturday afternoon so the kids could sleep for more of the drive and hopefully make it go faster. We are really glad we did that because it still took forever and he probably would have missed his flight if we left Sunday. The drive home was beautiful- we especially enjoyed Connecticut, and we were so glad we took the trip! Boston is such a fun city and the people are so nice. We can't wait to go again someday!