Boston Commons

So if you've been wondering where I've been (and I doubt anyone was), I was home for a week.   Since this is about the city, I won't talk about the country, save to say that only this setter could have a vacation involving a poisonous snake and waiting out a violent storm in a pickup truck (not, thankfully, at the same time).

Anyhow, I came straight back and went to the EduWeb conference in... Boston.  We're cheap here at Harvard.  Luckily, lots of conferences come to us, so we kind of cheat.   It made it easy to return the rental car, at least.

To get to the wonderful Boston Plaza Hotel and Towers (another landmark worth seeing), I take the Red Line into Boston, then pick up the Green Line and hop over to the Arlington stop -- or so Google tells me.  While I did this the first morning, when I didn't have to be on the trains until 10:00, something told me not to listen to Google when it came to getting on the extremely weird and overloaded Green Line at 5:30 that afternoon.  So I decided to walk to Park Street station, which turns out to be about 15 minutes from the Arlington stop on foot, and right through the Public Gardens and Commons.

Two books familiar to most of us from our childhood take place at least partially in and around this area -- That'd be Make Way for Ducklings and Trumpet of the Swan.  Welp, below you get both ducks*, and, way in the background, the swan boats.

 

And just so you get a chance to see where I've been hanging out all week, the Imperial Ballroom at the hotel:

*Actually, after looking more closely, there are actually ducklings in that picture.  Totally missed them while I was walking by.