Woke up at 7:00 and did my morning routine. It’s nice that the fitness center in the hotel is right down the hallway.
Went downstairs for breakfast and then caught the T up to Harvard. My plan was to tour the campus and visit several of the museums.
Before I left the hotel, I made change for some of the $20 bills I had. I have seen several people begging for money on the streets of Boston and had given away all my smaller bills.
Anyway, the T stop is right at the entrance to Harvard University, but I missed it and walked the other way. I ended up at a nice park with several monuments including this one to the soldiers from the area who died in the Civil War.
You can see that it was another day of beautiful weather. Sunny without a cloud in the sky and temperatures in the low 70’s.
I noticed a gentleman standing on the side of the monument that I had seen on the T. He was in the same car on the T as me. So, I went over to talk to him. I figured that if God put him in my path twice, I should talk with him. His name was Rob, and he is from England. He had just finished hiking from Pensacola Florida on the Gulf Coast to the border of Maine and Canada, including the entire AT. A hike of over 3,000 miles!! We talked for a while about his adventures and I shared some of mine from my bike ride across America. We both had similar positive experiences. Rob is also a Scoutmaster for his troop back home (something else we had in common), and his troop of scouts were hiking 3,000 miles combined while Rob was hiking solo. They were doing this as a fundraiser for the troop, so I gave Rob some money to help out his troop.
I got my directions straightened out and made it onto the campus. Harvard looks similar to Davidson College, except a lot bigger.
I walked around campus for a while and then made my way to the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology. The first floor of the museum was dedicated to American Indian history and artifacts. I found it very interesting and slowly went through all of the exhibits. The information about how Native American Indian’s have been treated was very saddening. Their culture and lifestyle is very interesting.
The other two stories of the museum weren’t as interesting to me, and I sped through them.
Then I went across the street to the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East. Again, it was three floors. I skipped the first floor, because I was interested in the second floor which was about Egypt. I was a little disappointed on the displays, because it was mostly dedicated to how Harvard has been involved in Egyptology since the mid-1800’s. There were very few specimens to look at. But it seems that most of the Harvard specimens are on display at the Museum of Fine Arts, which is on my list for tomorrow.
The third floor of the museum wasn’t very interesting either. It was dedicated to how they make reproductions of the stone carvings and statues from the Mesopotamia period. Some of the reproductions were interesting, though.
My final museum was the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments. It was absolutely fascinating!! But, I know that Elizabeth and the kids wouldn’t have enjoyed it. It was a small museum, but it was packed with ancient scientific instruments from the 1500’s to the 1980’s.
There were dozens of pieces donated from Benjamin Franklin including this model of the solar system from the late 1700’s
There was a clock from the late 1600’s that still worked and had the correct time.
So many interesting instruments and machines about air pressure, light, sound, astronomy, spectral analysis, particle accelerators, navigation, anatomy, etc. The signage was good to tell you what all the specimens were, but not much about how they all worked.
By the time I finished that last museum, it was after 3:00, and I hadn’t had lunch yet. So, I found a food truck on campus and had a late lunch. Then I walked around the campus some more and sat on the campus green for a while and relaxed.
I walked out into the town of Cambridge and saw Longfellow’s house. But it wasn’t open to see inside, I could only walk the grounds.
I made my way back to the T and then back to my hotel. I was back at my hotel by 5:30. Another 12K steps for the day.