Another one of these infamous posts-from-the-summer….I never really talked about Kevin and my trip to Boston.
The Trip There: After a memorable stop in Warren (world famous hot dogs…who would have guessed?), Kevin and I headed into the ‘Burgh for a day of tourism before an early start for Boston the next morning
High on the list of things to do was a Kevin request; the Andy Warhol museum. We, by another Kevin request, didn’t come down from the north but instead took the long way to come through the Fort Pitt tunnels. The first surprise of the day was heading over to the North Side….there’s crazy crowds of tailgaters…what the heck is going on down here??? Turns out some country artist is in concert at Heinz Field. We park across the river and walk back over to the museum.
The museum is really well done. Walked away quite impressed.
Not a whole lot else to report….aside from the fire alarm in the hotel a little before midnight!
The drive was uneventful…..the picture above was the first time we saw a sign for Boston (we’re in Hartford). Really enjoyed spending the time with Kevin….we talked about many a different things but definitely the conversation revolved around the music we rotated through (memory tells me that Connecticut was dominated by the symphonies of Carl Nielsen (both Kevin and I had never heard of him, but, were quite impressed with the last movement of his fourth Symphony). Spent some time on the back roads of Massachusetts as we avoided some big backups we spotted on the google traffic maps on the Mass. Turnpike.
Orientation: Kevin gets a dorm room that he shares with some guy (and honestly, even today I don’t know anything more than that, except that he got there on Monday morning and Kevin had the room to himself Sunday night) and I got a room over in West Village. I thought I would have to be partnered with somebody, but, I got a single room….
(and I think any student who gets this single room is doing pretty well for themselves)
(okay, the bed is kind of a clunker, but, if you are going to be here long term you do what we did for Kevin..buy a mattress topper)
(the view out the window. I was in West Village. Kevin was across campus in some very dorm-like dorms, nothing like what he is living in this fall)
(the cafeteria in International Village. We ate dinner here Sunday night and this is where Kevin will eat most of his meals this fall. It is very nice, with multiple stations of entrees to choose from. Of course, as Kevin and Suzanne keep saying, it is nothing like what they saw in Oklahoma!)
(A panorama looking west south and west from campus from the elevator lobby in ‘my’ dorm)
There isn’t a whole lot to report from Orientation. Kevin got ‘orientated’….which consisted of a lot of ‘briefings’ and organized fun time. Parents were invited to many a different lecture on many a different topic that I found universally boring…..already knew most of the stuff they were telling us!
Boston Tour: The highlight of the trip for me was a tour of Boston….we left in the evening so all of these pictures are as the sun sets. Not a whole lot of descriptions here because I was perpetually away from the guide….
(all of this is within 2 miles of campus…this is pretty early on, I think I’m standing on Huntingdon, the main street that bisects campus looking northeast towards downtown Boston. One highlight story…Kevin chose to wore a Michigan shirt he picked up when they went up to Charlevoix…it is Michigan and has the lower peninsula on the front in ‘map’ format with roads and the UP on the back. Nobody came up to him and said “Hey, you’re from Michigan” but on this tour another couple did come up to me and said “Hey, was that your son with the Michigan shirt?”)
(Brownstones along the Commonwealth Avenue Mall….I think)
(One of the more ornate houses we passed…)
(Old South Church along Boylston Street)
(The Library, with some big building that I don’t remember in the background)
(Trinity Church at Copley Square)
(I even went back and looked at the maps…I’m not sure what this is called. I think that’s the State House in the background)
(More of the same. Pretty….)
(worst picture of Kevin. Ever.)
Drive Home: The goal here was to see how long it would take if we made every effort to drive straight through. The answer? 11.5 hours. Blasted through Canada with rainstorms and the world’s longest pause on Radio Disney (don’t ask how we even ended up on that channel) waiting for Meghan Trainor to introduce her song (and man did they drag that out….much to my annoyance and Kevin’s laughter).
