Boston, Massachusetts

We arrived in Boston on Monday 3rd October after a short flight from Newark Airport, New York. Will was visiting MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) on Tuesday, so MIT kindly put us up for the night in a very nice hotel which cost about three times what we usually pay for accommodation when we are footing the bill ourselves! Considering MIT is regularly ranked one of (if not the) top universities in the world, I think they could probably afford it...

That afternoon/evening I left Will to catch up on some work at the hotel and went for a nice long walk to explore a bit of Boston. I walked past some very nice old buildings which were part of the MIT campus.

There were lovely walking trails along the banks of the Charles River. It was a beautiful time of the year with Fall in full flow. It was dinner time by the time I was ready to head back to the hotel, so I grabbed a couple of take-away Freshii bowls, our favourite 'fast-food' in the States... I do hope they eventually make it to NZ.

Will's talk on Tuesday went well. He enjoyed the thoughtful and intelligent questions and discussion that comes with presenting to such a bright audience! I liked the snazzy poster they had put together to advertise his talk.

While Will was at MIT, I took an Uber with our bags to our new accommodation, a 1-bedroom Air BnB apartment I had booked for four nights. The apartment was awesome. It was part of a huge house owned by an artist and his wife. They lived in a large apartment upstairs, and rented out the spacious bottom floor apartment. The place was full of art, and also had some of the guy's sculptures in the backyard. The hosts were extremely kind and had left plenty of breakfast supplies such as bread, butter, eggs, granola, milk, coffee and orange juice for us to help ourselves to, as well as a couple of beers. It is the little extra touches like that that make using Air Bnb such a good experience, as well as the fact that you get a whole apartment for less than the price of a reasonable hotel room.

Boston was much more relaxed compared to some of the big busy cities we had visited over the last couple of weeks. There isn't actually a huge number of 'things' to do, which suited us fine! I spent a lot of time walking and enjoying the autumn colours. On Wednesday I took the train out to Harvard University's Arnold Arboretum, then walked back to the city via the Emerald Necklace which is a walking trail which links Boston's parkways and waterways. I liked the solar charging stations that were dotted through the parks

 It was (yet another) glorious day, perfect for a nice long scenic walk.

That evening we went out for dinner with one of Will's colleagues, Jan, who works at Harvard Medical School. Jan started out as one of Will's undergraduate students when Will was lecturing at Reading University, so he has done pretty well for himself! Will wasn't presenting at Harvard, but he did go there the following day to listen to a presentation from Jan. The Harvard campus is beautiful. It is very green with lots of lovely old buildings, and lots of tourists taking photos!

Will had been working hard in Boston, catching up on lots of bits and pieces. Just in case any of you think he is on a 'jolly' this year, here is proof that he is working at every available opportunity, including on the train! He'll often take his tablet out and about with us and knock out an hour or two of work while I go off exploring.

We got to Friday, our last full day in Boston, and Will hadn't really had a chance to see too much of the place, hence I dragged him out on a big walk with me.

There were more impressive Fall displays around in the lead-up to Halloween.

We ended up at the Boston Common, the oldest city park in the United States. Here is Will sitting on the bench used by Robin Williams and Matt Damon in the famous park scene from Good Will Hunting.

Watching the squirrels do their thing always amuses us, this one was particularly cute and very protective of its nut...

I also liked this Mother Duck sculpture.

The park was beautiful, and a lovely place to while away a few hours in the afternoon. After we'd had a nice wander around together, Will found a sunny spot to do a couple of hours work, and I spent some time catching Pokemon!

We really enjoyed our time in Boston, it was the perfect place to end our epic six month adventure in the United States. This was a country that I enjoyed living in much more than I expected to, and I'd definitely be open to the idea of spending more time there in the future if the opportunity ever arose. On Saturday 8th October we boarded a flight to the UK, ready for the next phase of our adventure.