Just this...

today just this pic. i dont want to write yet again about my upcoming move, its going through my head all day already... :)

it was such a lovely day today. very sunny and warm, but not hot. and above one of the images i saw today. this is on georges island, one of the islands in the boston harbor. those people have a view of boston, from afar.

 perfect weather for swimming too. so this evening i did some laps in the pool. so very relaxing!

Swan boats

these are the famous swan boats in the lagoon in the public garden. they are sort of a boston landmark. you can take the 15 minute boat ride around the lagoon, sitting on the benches in front of these swans. the seats you see here are for the operator of the boats, who move them forward by pedaling, similarly to riding a bike. we never did this, but it is very popular, and apparently something you do when in boston... :) 

they are in operation since 1877!! something i didnt know until i read the wikipedia page about them just now... the oldest boat currently in operation was built in 1918! here you can read more about the history of the swan boats.

Small city

there is boston, seen from a hill between the 2 cemeteries behind our apartment. its nice to walk up there. too bad that whole place is covered in shattered beer bottles... :( last time we were there it was even worse than before.

boston is not that big, actually. if i dared biking there you can easily get around the entire city. but well, there are still no bike lanes everywhere, although there are significantly more than when we arrived here 3 years ago....

Boston symphony

last week i got a nice surprise! someone had 1 extra ticket for a concert in the symphony hall. since tim was (and is) still in the netherlands, the decision was easy... :) i was not dressed for the occassion so i rushed home only to change and run out the door again. in cold, rainy weather... (right now its finally really nice weather!!). it was not supercrowded, and bag check (which they always do) was done with much more scrutiny than before; they looked at every item in my bag. 

me and tim had been to concerts a few times before, but we never sat on the balcony like i did this time, front row, and almost entirely in the center! its pretty, but i do have to say that i like the amsterdam concert hall better. the stage is also much bigger (first time here i was surprised by how tiny it was). i continue to be amazed by people who just walk during the concert, or get up as soon as a piece has ended. can nobody ever wait till the break??!! i feel this is something you dont see in the netherlands. for one because its weird, and 2 because its a waste of money to miss a part of the concert... ;) (the same happens in cinemas, people constantly get up and walk during the movie. its a bit distracting sometimes and even after 3 years i think its very weird behavior).

anyways... the boston symphony has a nice program, called 20under40, meaning that if you are under 40, you can go to many of the concerts for only 20 dollars (i think it is an anonymous donor who pays the difference)! that makes an evening at the symphony not that crazily more expensive than a ticket for the movies. still... its mostly old(er) people at the symphony... :)

Huge kettle

i posted a picture of this kettle before (here), its outside a starbucks on government center. 2 commenters (jack and ali) then told me that this wasnt a starbucks originally, and i was referred to an interesting article about the kettle by ali. this kettle belonged to the oriental tea company and was hung outside the shop in 1873 (!!!). in 1875, a contest was held to guess the capacity of the kettle, which drew huge crowds. i have seen this kettle so often now, but only when i read this article, did i realize it is a really, really big kettle! apparently on the day of the event, 8 boys and one tall man hid inside the kettle, and appeared when the event started. so... this weekend we went back to have another good look at this kettle, and hanging up there, its still hard for me to imagine that 8 boys and 1 tall man can fit in there!! during the event, the contents of the kettle were carefully measure and as you can see, they are engraved... something i also had never seen before. so cool!!! now i just want to get up there and try for myself.... would i really fit in there?!

Icy Charles

today we walked a bit around in boston and cambridge. it was not too cold, although freezing, so i thought it was a nice idea to walk to cambridge rather than taking the subway. so we took the longfellow bridge, and there it turned out to be really, really cold!! still a nice walk, but much colder than we had expected... as you can see, the charles is kind of frozen at the moment. in the back you see the harvard bridge, the longest bridge over the charles. as i was looking up the name of the bridges (i always forget them), i found that people review bridges. 6 people took the time to write down their thoughts on the harvard bridge, as you can see here...... ("Serves its purpose remarkably well, always there when I need it"......)

Snowy Boston....

nope, this is not a recent photo, but one from our first winter in boston; january 2011. there was sooo much snow! i was just looking at the pictures i took then, and it was even more than i remembered. i enjoyed everything of it; the snowstorms during the night with the wind slamming around our apartment, and the snow just falling, and falling and falling. and me? waking up every so many hours to check "the progress". getting outside in the morning in a perfectly white and silent world... we had several snowstorms 2 years ago, and while people were complaining and saying it was not normal, i thought we would get something similar last year...? but then we didnt, so i hoped it would happen this year....? so far not... but lets see.... tomorrow some snow is expected, but as its not freezing, i guess there will be rain too. but the next night it will be freezing cold.... so... perhaps next week...??! i want to go out and take pictures! right now the weather is actually a bit depressing. its grey and not cold. but not warm either. just grey and boring.... 

above is right outside the public garden in boston; the commonwealth avenue mall, which is lined pretty trees on both sides, and many statues in the middle. i have some photos of those... perhaps i should go find them for another post...

MFA exhibit

currently, the mfa has a nice exhibit featuring photographs by mario testino. its his first us exhibit and shows you, in huge size as you can see here. many celebrities you will have seen before. either in some sort of fashion photoshoot, partying or in just some weird and almost unrecognizable pose. some photos are well known shots, but its cool to see them so huge in a nicely lit museum, instead of in some magazine or CD cover.

we goto the museum of fine arts (MFA) quite often. the place is so terribly big! you can easily spend hours there... but that would be just a bit too much, so its nice to go often and just look at a portion of the museum. cheapos as we are, we are not members of the museum, but we know very well when we can go for free; each first weekend of the month since we store our money at the bank of america, and... each wednesday from 4 o'clock onwards you can visit the museum "by voluntary contribution". they suggest you pay 25 dollars (the current admission price, which is pretty high, i think), but you can pay whatever you want, or nothing at all, and the museum is open till 9.45! so... thats how we came to love this museum; i cant count the times we have been here during the past 2+ years....

Enjoy christmas!!

this is (again) at the boston common. the tree you see here comes from nova scotia, and is a present from their government to the people of boston. since 1971, this has been a tradition. it is in thanks and remembrance of the halifax explosion in 1917. on december 6 of that year, a french wartime ship fully loaded with explosives collided with a norwegian ship in the halifax harbour. the gigantic explosion that followed instantly killed 1900 people, and 9000 were wounded. anything, buildings, people, within 500 acres of the explosion vanished, and the explosion caused a tsunami in the harbour, causing even more damage. the city of boston quickly learned of the disaster and was the first to send help. the year after, in 1918, the people of halifax sent a tree to thank all those that helped. and as mentioned, since 1971 this has been a yearly tradition.

the tree lighting is a spectacle in itself, with a lot of performances and whatnot. we went there the first year we were in boston (together with 30,000 other people). it was so cold, we could hardly see anything and the (live) singing was not that good....needless to say, we did not go the past 2 years!  but... although sad, its good to know the story behind the tree....

and now you all should enjoy christmas!!

Getting better

after a week (a week!!) of being sick, i can finally say im feeling better again. not entirely, but better.. defenitely much better than i felt last week friday, or the entire weekend for that matter. beeehhh.... we must have picked up a virus here or there.

anyways. no pictures at all this week, so this is one from december last year. this is the frog pond in the boston common, which i have shown you several times before, mostly in summer when little kids play there to coll off. in winter it frozen, although both last winter and so far this winter it has been too warm to be frozen by itself.... :) (im waiting for the snow!!!). here you can see the huge amount of people, waiting to get onto the ice thats being polished. i really dont get why so many people are always skating here; its so tiny! 

ah well... time for bed now, still not feeling 100% healthy...

Ready to...

.... shoot!

this was at the cliff diving event last saturday. everyone was ready to take that one shot. except me... :)

i think its interesting that on the one hand there are all these fancy cameras, and on the other the phones. not much in between anymore, it seems!

I'm lazy!

today we saw some guys jumping off the roof of the ICA (institute of contemporary art) into the boston harbor. some 90 feet if i remember correctly. before they were down in the water, they did some nice turns and flips and what-not. but it went so very fast i missed many of the jumps (i guess a jump took 3 seconds?). also, i did not want to sit ready with my camera, until they would finally make the jump. and the few times i did, i didnt see anything of the jump as i was too busy clicking..., or seeing that i held my camera wrong and he jumped a little to the right, or left... most shots that i did manage to take were blurry, or just empty... 

i guess this is the only one that worked out... :)

it was super- supercrowded! but the weather was nice, and we had a good spot (thanks to our friends who were there much earlier than us; we somehow managed to miss the stop while on the subway, and had to go back, and it all took forever and ever). ah well... i dont think i want to become a cliff diver (they were all wearing tiny speedos), and before people realize what you are doing is amazing, its already over. besides, i prefer to be in the water, rather than jumping into it all the time....

Cooling boxes

this building is on somerset street in boston. i think its the courthouse... and i finally got to photograph all the air conditioning units that hang from many houses and buildings here! (i actually took several and couldnt decide which one to post). isnt it funny?

usually, a window (or half a window) is sacrificed to place the unit into it (but you could also cut a hole through the wall, ofcourse...). its huge, heavy and ugly. if standing underneath it (outside), you might get wet; this sometimes made me wonder whether it started to rain. if you want to know how air gets cooled through such a unit, please visit wikipedia... :) its quite long! all i took from it is that these units as you can see above are produced since 1935. although its ugly and you basically loose a window, the advantage of these units is that you can cool that specific room. our apartment for example can only cool (or heat) the entire place, including the bathroom... :( but as i cant stand the noise and quite quickly get cold when its on, we dont use it too often.

Summer evening

its hot! since days. i guess well above 30 degrees celsius (86F). sometimes theres some rain, but at some point the clouds recede and the sun is back at full force. i know not everyone likes it, but i do! we have the pool at our apartment complex so thats a great way to cool down (whenever we are allowed, ofcourse. the security murmured something the other day about "city regulations" to have it closed at 8 pm; as usual we were the last to leave, and really didnt want to. couldnt find anything about city regulations on google though...). 

evenings are lovely too. it remains warm.... so everyone is outside! this is at the boston common, yesterday evening (i just had an ice cream that i spilled all over my dress... grrr..actually, it turned out not to be the worst; later that evening almost an entire glass of beer got spilled onto my dress as well.. then it was really time to go home... ). in the front you can see the brewer fountain and behind it the state house. 

we really had a nice day, we started out with quite some swimming. as it was raining a tiny little bit, we had almost the entire place for ourselves. then some groceries and a walk through boston. eventually we got to the museum of fine arts, with free entrance as it was the first weekend of the month (with our bank card). some more walking, dinner, and eventually the ice cream and the beer... :) 

(the dress is clean again. and my shoes as well....)

Fisherman's memorial

above part of an 8 foot tall bronze statue of a fisherman that looks out over the gloucester harbor. its known as the fishermans memorial, but also named "man at the wheel". here you can see it in its entirety. apparently, its often confused with another iconic image; that of the gorton's fisherman, the logo of the company that sells fish sticks (also from gloucester), present on its packages since 1964... haha.

but no, this monument was placed in 1925, to commemorate "they that go down to the sea in ships" (taken from the bible), honoring 300 years of gloucester losing fishermen (thats quite a sad way to say it...). for example, in 1879, 249 fishermen and 29 vessels were lost during a terrible storm. and in 1991 6 fishermen died in a storm that formed the basis for the book, and later movie, "the perfect storm".

Watching whales...

i guess yesterdays sunflowers helped; it was very sunny and warm today! we got up quite early, baked some bread (yumyumyum!!) and drove to gloucester. an hour or so from our apartment. there we got loaded onto a boat with many, many other people. whale sighting was guaranteed, and if not, you would get a season's pass to come back whenever (i dont know whether the whales ON the boat were regarded as sightings...). finally, we set off... for... cape cod... hahaha. we first drove an hour north just to sail down south.... it was more than a 2 hour boatride before we arrived at the whales territory where they were having lunch, dinner and breakfast.... despite the sun it was pretty chilly! the sea however was silky smooth, without any waves. we first saw a huge shark, which was amazing... click click click. and then we saw a few whales. click click click again... :D i kept thinking; should i watch, or should i watch through my lens...? i did both. it was really cool to see. they are sooo huge! their breathing ofcourse was funny (just like in the movies, hahahahaha), and their diving down. only one we saw did a tiny little trick, that you can see above. i could "just" see it; there were too many people in front of me to take a picture of it, but tim did! (a photoshopmaster then would magically erase and refill the right corner... but im not. so ijust give it to you as is). isnt that cool? it was quite spetacular to see them, even without any tricks orjumping in the air or whatever.i canonly imagine how amazing that would be!!

and then after a while of wathcing them swimming around, and saying ooh and aaaahhh! and tons of pics with a huge black shiny thing in the ocean, sometimes their fins, it was time to get back again, another 2 hours.... so now i have a tiny little sunburn and a lot of sleep! good night!

South boston

this is in south boston, taken quite a while ago. just saw it again and i like it, with all those cherrypickers or whatever you call them and 2 seemingly lost musicians.... (but i guess there were just going home after the st patricks parade)

From afar...

... you can still faintly see the boston skyline! just compare it to this picture...
above we were in gloucester, rockport, or somewhere in between.

Whats there...

... to see?! 

this is an old pic, taken during the st patricks day parade. it was funny to see the kids all like above, suddenly. something interesting surely was coming! (it turned out to be a big red elmo....).

this weekend was busy, we had friends over and did "boston sightseeing". even so we do that almost every week by ourselves, im somehow quite tired now!! but it was nice (and i ate too much. beehh. tomorrow i have togoto the gym)! we even went bowling, saw some cemeteries, a museum and whatnot....

Some sightseeing

here you see the boston skyline from the cambridge side, close to MIT.