We woke up at 8:00am this morning. It felt early since it was 6:00am back home. We got cleaned up for the day and headed to the lobby to get some breakfast. The breakfast area was packed! All the tables were occupied so we stood at the bar and started to eat. A few minutes later, a table opened up and we were able to grab it. The breakfast was pretty basic. They have cereal, oatmeal, bread, bagels, and some hard boiled eggs.
After breakfast, we headed out for the day. We left the hotel at 10:00am and hopped on the train which has a station just across the street from the hotel. We made our way to Prudential Center where we had booked a tour with Boston Duck Boat Tours. We arrived at 10:30am and checked in for our tour. They boarded us on our duck boat at 10:50 and the tour started at 11:00. Duck boats are amphibious vehicles that have tires for travelling on land. Our conDUCKtor was “Harvey Heartbreak”. His story was that he was a marathon runner and ran in the Boston Marathon. He was quite the character and we enjoyed his narration throughout the tour. Whenever he said “on your marks” he wanted us to say “quack, quack”. He had us quack at various people and other duck boats along the route which was fun. They took us through various areas around downtown Boston before heading into the Charles River for the water portion of the tour. He explained some of the history of Boston and pointed out buildings that are hundreds of years old. We really enjoyed the tour which took about an hour and a half.
After the tour, we walk a couple of blocks to Raising Cane’s for some lunch. We enjoyed some chicken fingers and then continued on. We walked to Commonwealth Ave which has a pedestrian walkway with a bunch of trees and various monuments in the middle of the road. We followed it to Boston Common which is a large park with a pond. The park was very pretty with several large trees. They have some swan boats that do a loop through the pond. We decided to go for a quick trip on one of the boats. It’s only about a 10 minute loop. Then we continued on our way.
We left the park and went for a 15 or 20 minute walk to the Museum of Science. We arrived at the museum at 3:00pm We spent a couple of hours exploring the museum. They had various exhibits including animals of the area, and arctic exhibit, and AI exhibit where they had some of the Boston Dynamics robots, an exhibit about the human body, spacecraft, engineering, and an exhibit about perceptions. We really enjoyed the perceptions exhibit. It was about fooling your senses and had several stations where you could test your perceptions. Such as lifting two objects of the same weight, but different sizes which felt like different weights. Visual illusions, temperature illusions, etc. It was fun.
We left the museum and hopped on the subway back to our hotel. We forgot about rush hour so the train was packed! We made it back to the hotel and relaxed for a bit before heading out for some dinner. We saw a noodle bar across the street from the restaurant we ate at last night that we thought we’d try. The restaurant was called Mecha pronounced Meh-Chah. Darrell and Patrick ordered ramen. Michael ordered some Pho, and Amanda ordered General Tso’s Chicken. We were a little disappointed in the meals. Especially Michael who forgot to ask for no cilantro in his soup.
After dinner, we headed into CVS Pharmacy across the street for a couple of supplies before returning to the hotel and calling it a night.