Oh man, oh man, oh man!

Well!  I got moved to a new room because I've been having so many internet issues.  Hopefully I can get through this and it will post.  :)

I arrived in San Diego for training on Sunday and have to say I was blown away just flying in.  Amazing.

I'm on day two of training.  Love the group of people I've been learning with, we've all spent a lot of time laughing our heads off and then back to learning hard stuff.  :)

I got out last night to see a few sites.  I was hoping to hit the art museum, but with my training schedule it's not going to work.  HOWEVER, the outside of the museum is worth it alone.  The Balboa Park area is just amazing.

No need to talk to much about it - here's the proof!

Outside of the art museum.

The rest of these are different museums, parks and outdoor areas in the Balboa Park area.

Apparently the second largest outdoor pipe organ is being this gate.  There was a free outdoor concert last night, but I wasn't able to stay.

The planes fly SO close to the buildings downtown - it's crazy!  Not sure if you can see the plan to the left above the pavilion.  It looks tiny but when I was there it was enormous.  :) 

From Balboa Park I started to walk back, I had spotted this bridge on taxi ride to Balboa Park so I stopped here to see this bridge. 

View from one side of the bridge. 

Hoping to get to the beach tomorrow and check things out after class!

Farewell to Boston!

I'm exhausted!  What a trip!  We saw a lot in a short amount of time.  But I do have a confession... it wasn't my most favorite place in the world.  It's been on our list to see for many years and I am happy I saw it.  I enjoyed  seeing a lot of things, but it wasn't as amazing as I thought it would be.  So it was probably more an expectation thing than anything else.

We're missing buddy and ready to get home and see him!  He's been at mom and dad's house, but I think Savannah's been his sleeping buddy!  He loves them all, so I'm sure he'll be sad to go! 

A lot of the places we went the last few days we couldn't take pictures in, so they're not shown here.  If I can remember them all, I'll try and mention them.

Friday we visited several places, including the JFK presidential library.  It was in a beautiful location and was much more modern than I would have thought it would be.  His relationship with his brother Bobby was interesting - I did not realize that JFK had appointed him to be the Secretary of State.

Cartoon story boards of a comic strip that was used for the Kennedy campaign.  Superman helped him win the election.  :)

 

Landing outside the JFK library overlooking the city.

Flag inside the building.  This glass area looks out to the city/water as well.

 

From there we headed back in to town to a privately owned art museum (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum).  I wasn't over the top for this museum; HOWEVER, they had an art theft in the 1990's that was the largest art heist in history.  Two robbers dressed as cops gained entrance to the building on St. Patrick's day (you can guess the police had other things to do) and took off with several very valuable pieces.  The snagged works by all the greats.  The art is still missing and the empty frames hang on the wall where the works should be. 

 

From there it was off to the Museum of Fine Arts.  It was a FANTASTIC art museum.  The American and European art work sections were excellent.  I became a big fan of Albert Bierstadt in art class and they had some awesome pieces of his.  Additionally, John Singer Sargent works were in abundance and beautiful. 

 

Storm in the Mountains - Albert Bierstadt

 

 

From there it was off to the Italian district for cappuccino, treats and food!  We had a lovely meal and then headed home from a long day! 

 

 

Saturday Nick got up early and rented a car and we headed to Provincetown, MA.  It's that very curly part of MA.

 

 

Every one and their brother were headed there!  It was packed and the traffic was at a trickle!  It was a lovely place tho! 

 

On the way through we stopped by and saw Plymouth Rock.  Nick had driven to see it a few years ago when I had a conference in CT.  There was a make-up 4th of July parade happening Saturday and Plymouth was a zoo!  It took us a lot of turning around to get away from the parade, but we eventually made it to the rock.  :)

 

Doesn't quite seem big enough, does it?

 

Huge, beautiful monument in Plymouth.

 

Sites from Provincetown

 

Panorama of one of the dune areas.

 

Man made stone jetty that was probably a mile and a 1/2.  We walked most of it.  Quite lovely.

Scene from jetty.

 



 I'm caught up to today!!

 

Today, Sunday, we spent time touring Hahvahd or Harvard as people who pronounce their "r's" say it. :)  The tour was given by a student and he did a great job.

 

We learned about Harvard history, students and famous alumni. 

 

Freshman Campus

20,000 folding chairs can fill the area in front of this building.  Commencement speeches and other important speakers present here.

Bill Gates dorm.  He didn't graduate.  Matt Damon and Natalie Portman also attended but did not graduate.

 



 

 From there it was off to the Christian Science Center.  We couldn't take pictures, but they had a map room that was interesting to see and difficult to explain.  It was stain glass and numerous people could step into the middle of it... so that puts quite the picture in your head.  :)

 

Outside of the church... not too shabby...

 

A few this and that pics from the end of the day walk today...

 

 

 

 





 

Live from Boston... it's THURSDAY NIGHT - Part 2! :)

Well... I didn't get a chance to blog last night, so I thought I'd do two tonight.  Easier to read that way.  Today was a great day!  The weather's been great, which is awesome!  Although, it all gets hot at some point!

We crawled out of bed at 9:30am ET today - man - we were tried after yesterday!  Between the early AM wake-up call and the late game, it was a long day!  It was nice to sleep in!

The subway here is called the "T" and super easy to use.  The people we're staying with gave us a free access pass - so that has been very helpful for getting around. 

We started with the freedom trail today.  There were some boring parts and some awesome parts. :)  The amazing thing about old architecture to me is often the ceilings.  They're complete works of art in and of themselves. 

Ceiling in the Boston Capitol Building

 

One of the many churches along the Freedom Trail.

 

Nick.  The building behind him is the location of the Boston Massacre.  Nick said that during it's day this building was a presence and would have dwarfed all other buildings around.  Or something similar to that... :)

 

This girl walked in front of us for some time... I could not make sense of her shirt... unless it was suppose to be a joke, it was a terrible translation... at the very bottom it says, "A man wan two warches is never saure time."  I'm assuming it should have said, "A man with two watches is never sure of the time."  There are a couple other sentences on her shirt that were unknowable.  :) 

 

Nick took this picture of me in front of Paul Revere's house, didn't look at it and said it was good.  lol.  ha.  It was almost completely black on the camera.  It was actually brighter on the computer, so there's that...  Paul's house was pretty tiny!  But it seemed nice.  Also, it was way bigger than the house John Wayne was born in... which some how seemed weird to me... why was John Wayne born in such a small house?

 

The "Freedom Trail" follows this path all through town.  Here's a snap shot of the red line we walked most the day!

 

The U.S.S. Constitution was awesome!!

 

 

 

View from one of the portholes on the ship.  Also, the water in the area is FILLED with Jellyfish!!  That was awesome to see to.  It's unbelievable. 

Bunker hill.  We climbed all 294 steps to the top of that thing.  I don't recommend it.  My legs were shaky for hours.  We did get to listen to a guy talk on his cell phone up there tho!  Who calls someone and says, "they just want to catch up" after climbing 294 stairs!?!? 

View from the top!

 

Well!  That's all folks.  This doesn't seem like half of what we did - but I think it's the highlights. :)

Live from Boston... it's THURSDAY NIGHT!

Nick in me and our Boston Red Sox outfits...

Well... a 2:45am wake-up call to catch our 5am flight left me with some tired eyes yesterday!  That being said, we were partying in Boston by 10:30am.  :)  Can't beat that. 

We're staying in an AirB&B outside the city, so once we got settled we headed back in to town to see what we could see.

I have to say, Boston isn't really anything like I expected.  I was thinking a NY/DC combo... but not so much.  It really is a big small town.  The people have been lovely and there is plenty to do and see. 

Of all the truly important things we saw, a stroll past the iconic bar "Cheers" that inspired the TV show was on the list.  Nothing to write home about, yet here I am... writing home about it.  ;)

 

 

The Boston Public Library, oldest in the United States, did not disappoint.  It seemed odd that it was still a library - but it was indeed.  There was air in almost all the buildings, but one, which was again, weird somehow.  Copiers and books and people and this old ancient beautiful building.

 

Library Courtyard

 



 



The real fun of the night was watching the Red Sox play baseball.  I can't say I'm a sports fan of any kind, but here's what I figured out... when the team in white hit the ball - we cheered.  When the team in grey missed the ball - we cheered.  :)  The score was 3-0 for ever and then things turned around.  We had a blast.  They won the game and we did a lot of cheering and dancing and singing up until that point.  We sat next to some guys from NY and we celebrated with them when the game was over.  :)  I had to be talked into it by Nick, but it was a super fun night.

Classic Nick shot

 

Seats at Fenway

Guy ahead of us kept score on paper all night... you could tell he's spent a lot of time at that ball park.

Baseball field at night.

We're Going to Kansas City - Kansas City Here We Come!

I'm not sure if that song is about Kansas City, MO or Kansas City, KS... maybe we'll never know?  :)

We took a quick get away trip to Kansas City, MO this past week and had a lovely time!  What a great city!  I'd always heard mixed reviews on it -- but it has an Anthropology... what more could you need to know? 

Nick started doing some travel research and away we went! 

Our first stop was the Hallmark Visitor Center -- we thought we'd give it a look!  It wasn't anything too spectacular, but it was a quick interesting wander.  The person that started Hallmark (Someone named something Hall) was close with Winston Churchill and encouraged him to publish his paintings.  There were some of his works in the center, so that was interesting to see, he was really a very good artist.  Additionally, they had a couple artists that paint for their greeting cards there painting live.  So that was also neat to see. 

Nick kissing "Maxine" a Hallmark card character.

 

 

From there it was off to find some food!  Nick found an awesome BBQ spot - Oklahoma Joe's BBQ.  Hands down the best BBQ I've ever had.  It was in a gas station -- and the line was out the door.  One of those few gems that are still around.

 

Nick looking classy...

Me -- looking classy... 

 

Us... looking classy.  :) 

An older gentleman took our picture -- it was quite the comedy of errors. 

 

 

It was hotter than Haiti there - btw.  But it was hot in Iowa too!  We wandered around in the Country Club Plaza/Shopping area -- what a beautiful place!  There were so many great shops -- but 2 of my favs made the entire area worth it -- Anthropology and Paper Source.  Love, love, love.  They know things of beauty.  It was also very hot. 

 

Kansas City is known for their fountains.  Nick kept laughing because one of the tourism bits he read said that they didn't know how many fountains they had, but it was over 200.  Apparently they're unable to get an accurate read on the number of fountains they had.

 

 

A few people were scoffing that our last trip was to Italy and now this one is to Kansas City.  But all the fountains were in Kansas City so we adapted just fine!  ;)

 

We grabbed a piece of cheesecake at the Cheesecake factory -- and called it a night!

 

The next day we headed out to a tour of a coffee roaster.  It was a small independent place and they did a great job -- amazingly for free.  The tour guide was an older guy and he kept us laughing.  :)  The process is quite interesting -- I didn't realize that the altitude of the coffee beans affected the quality.  He also told us that a 1.5 lbs of coffee is the produce of a entire trees fruit for the year.  I think Nick goes thru that in a week.  ;)

 

 

Classic Nick Timmerman shot... 

We also went to the art museum there and that was free also -- and it was a great museum!  We were looking at a sculpture there and we kept thinking we had seen it in Italy somewhere, but weren't sure.  Interestingly, it was a sculpture that had been in the Capitoline museum in Italy and it had just arrived in KCMO... how weird is that?  We also hit the WW1 museum and it was also fantastic.  I got a little choked up in there and had to skip some of it.  It's just heart wrenching to think of the price of war. 

 

Front or back lawn of the art museum



 

Front or back lawn of the art museum -- loved these birdy art installations everywhere -- very cool. 

 

Classic Nick -- w/ KCMO in the background! From high-a-top part of the WW1 museum/monument.

 

The entrance into the actual museum has a glass floor and below are 9000 poppies.   

They showed a great video on the screen behind this area (where the shadows of the men are).  They had recreated a war scene in front of the screen. 

 

Nick and I don't eat very well when we travel, we're not overly preoccupied with it and it's one of the ways we cut down on travel costs.  But this trip was great, we found places and they were affordable!  BBQ, French, Indian and a eclectic little dive called The Brick.  I had the equivalent of the Taco John's Potato Ole Bravo -- it was super YUMMY!  Nick had a meatloaf sandwich.  Ever place we went -- we left happy!

 

Quick trip - but I'd highly recommend it!  We'd like to go back and hit the Truman Presidential Library, Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, and they have a museum on a sunken ship (Arabia Steamboat Museum) they unearthed in a farm field -- I LOVE SUNKEN SHIPS!!  So -- we have to get back.  PLUS Anthropology and Paper Source.  :)