Wednesday 17 May 2017

The Mapparium and a warm day in sunny Boston

To start off the day, we went to the Mary Baker Eddy Library in Boston to finally see the Mapparium. I honestly thought it would be a bit of a tour, but it only took 15 minutes. Nonetheless, they were very cool 15 minutes. I was not allowed to take pictures, so I have to show below an image from the interweb.


The mapparium is a representation of the earth that is to scale (damn Africa is big!) and it shows the borders in 1935. Very cool to see. The acoustics in this place were quite spectacular. The glass panes reflected almost everything unlike for example curtains that absorb sound. As a consequence, a whisper on one side of the room can be heard clear as day on the other side. In the center of the globe, you can hear your own voice like it is Dolby Surround Sound. Very creepy :) I asked if I can use a torch to check if light follows a similar reflection pattern... unfortunately the woman who opened the room to the Mapparium for us did not allow it :-(

Afterwards, we went hunting for souvenirs. As you may or may not know, Isi and I always buy something from the city. Usually a thing that represents the city like a building, such as a miniature Eiffel Tower for Paris. Boston does not really have anything, so we went to every souvenir shop, we could find... No luck.

At lunch, we met up with my friend Al again near his work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in a place called Friendly Toast to chat and maybe also get some more ideas. For that we walked from Boston over the bay to Cambridge (the town of MIT and Harvard).
The place we ate at did something so American, I had to try it, although it was a heart attack on a platter. Get this: Fried Chicken with Waffels on mashed sweet potatoes doused in maple syrup and sour creme. It was delicous  yet at the same time I felt my arteries seize in cholesterol shock.

Chicken & Waffles
After this tiny, major lunch we needed to get back into Boston to hunt for more souvenirs, but our stomachs were so full, we could hardly move... oh and the fact that it was 30°C did not help. Yep, you heard right, the weather went from 14°C two days ago to 30°C!?!?!?! Half way into town we rested in Boston Commons again just to digest, the food was that heavy.

30°C on the bridge between Boston and Cambridge
We eventually found a small tiny boat in a bottle signifying one of the ships from which the tea was thrown into the harbour during the Boston Tea Party. It seemed the most Bostony thing next to a T-Shirt of Harvard or MIT or sports apparel showing the Celtics, Bruins or Red Sox was that bottled ship.

To round off the day, we went for a quick drink in a place called the Sunset Grill in Brookline (not Boston center). I made sure this time that I had my passport with me, just so that they would not check it, which they did not, of course.
We went to the Sunset Grill, because they were known to have about 400 beers many of which are American. Nicely enough, they also had something called a Flight, which is 4 half-beers essentially. The last time I had this was in California when I was there for work, but we just chose 4. Here they gave me a piece of paper where I also had to note the "Flight Destination".

I duly obeyed and while I was at it, I also wanted to give it a flight number. It was four beers, so I rated them out of 10 and the numbers together will give the flight number. Thus we had Destination: "European Stomach - Flight #: ES 9454" :-)

Flight Number ES 9454
With the beer drinking completed and having watched the Celtics getting pummeled at home by the Cavs in their play-off game, we were satisfied to go home and get ready for our last full day in the US, where we will take a ferry out to Spectacle Island to go and walk the circumeference of 2.5 miles. My knees have been giving me quite a bit of grief lately, so I hope they will hold up for this.

With this, good night to y'all - Vogel out.

Flight of beer - Flight Destination European Stomach, Flight Number ES9454

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