Going to New York and Boston was both tiring and exhilarating. I had lots of fun exploring, but my most favorite thing we did would most likely be when we went whale watching. Cetaceans are some of the most unique and amazing creatures out there. They are some of my favorite creatures.
I did learn a few things about myself while on this trip. Specifically about my travelling habits. Before going on this trip I had only traveled with family, and I never really did well. But I’d say that I did pretty good on this trip. It’s quite clear to me now that I have limits that need to be respected.
It was pretty inspiring to meet up with an MNCS graduate who is studying geology. He’s been dating layers from Alaska. And at the Museum of Natural History I learned about this team that found a giant mass of coral, and they took samples all the way through it. The coral was around 500 years old!
To be honest, I’d really like to go on the trip to Japan next year. But at the same time, I have a lot of my own limitations that would most likely make that difficult. Not just for me, but for the others, too. So, I’m not too sure if I should consider going on the trip to Japan, even if I’ve wanted to go there for many years.
I’m aware that this post is quite late. You see, our last day of doing stuff was a very busy day, and I was too tired afterwards to write a blog post… same as the day after that… I only now have found the strength to reflect and write.
We drove about 50 minutes out for our whale watching tour. The whale watching tour has been one of the things that I’ve looked forward to the most. I sat on the outside of the boat, waiting for departure. The sun was intense where I sat, though. But once we took off the wind made it MUCH colder. Sea water kept splashing us, and I was (of my knowledge) the only one of our group crazy enough to stay out there. Funny thing is, this was a day when the seas were calm. Eventually we found a finwhale! The first one we found wasn’t fully grown, and finwhales are a bit more reclusive, so we didn’t get to see the full size. I didn’t really get any good pictures of the finwhale, either.
Moving on, I’d like to talk about the main whales that we saw. A mother and calf humpback! The mother, Scylla, is known for having mothered the largest number of calves throughout her lifetime (along with the first named whale, Salt). As of this year, Scylla has had 16 recorded calves! Here are some pictures of Scylla and her new calf.
Next, we went to a beach. One of the first things I did there was cut my foot on a seashell. Surprisingly, it didn’t hurt. We ended up pulling a glorious prank on Paul. Solvej and Abigail dug themselves a large hole in the sand. Then, we buried the two of them in it. Finally, we covered them up with some towels and waited for Paul to discover them. It was so beautiful.
After the beach, we went to this seafood place for dinner. Personally, I don’t eat seafood, but the chicken sandwich I got was really good. This place mostly consisted of fried food. It seemed like a lot of people didn’t really enjoy it. Something nice about this place was the free refills on soda, though. I ended up making myself a graveyard drink (mixing multiple sodas together), and it was actually really good.
The final thing we did was go to Salem for a walking tour. We were told spooky ghost stories and history of the witch trials. The houses around Salem are incredibly beautiful. An interesting fact we were told is that Salem is about 3 times smaller than it was back in the day.
And that’s basically it. This won’t be my final post, as I still have to write a reflection for the trip in a blog. But thank you all for reading these posts we’ve been doing and commenting on them. I hope you’ve enjoyed hearing about our adventures.
Sunday was a lot more of a chill day. We started by visiting The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. It was a beautiful and rainy day out. This museum was once the home of a rich woman, which the museum is named after. She liked collecting art and eventually opened her home to the public.
When Isabella died, she stated in her will that nothing to do with the art could be changed. So, when the largest art heist in history took place at the museum and 13 works of art were stolen, nothing was done with the empty frames. The heist has remained unsolved for the past 34 years.
After that, I went to a Boston tea party re-enactment. It was certainly… interesting. I don’t think that it was horrible, but it just felt kind of odd. But you could tell that a lot of effort was put into the whole thing. We didn’t stick around for long after and headed back to the hostel. For dinner, we ate out in Chinatown and that was it.
How many miles do you think we’ve walked in the past four days? Well, what if I told you that I know the answer, and it’s all because of Pokémon Go.
We’ve walked roughly 30 miles in the past few days. Just a fun fact to start off this post.
Anyways…We left New York. So long to the city that never sleeps, I won’t miss that. We took a nice 4 hour train ride through Connecticut and Rhode Island to Boston. The hostel we’re currently staying at is right next to Chinatown!
Then we walked to this indoor restaurant market. I ended up getting ice-cream for dinner since I just wanted something cold. We also met up with an MNCS graduate there; Broden. You know what career he’s taken up? Geology!
Anyways, we walked all around the freedom trail. And then our day was done. I think that I like Boston more than New York. The architecture is more calming and consistent.
The first thing we did was go to the American Museum of Natural History. I didn’t get to see everything I wanted to see, but it was amazing nonetheless.
After lunch I went to the Museum of Modern Art. They feature some really famous paintings there.
Then we got to see Hamilton on Broadway! I’ve seen Hamilton like 5 times before on TV, but seeing it in person was a whole other experience. The actor for Alexander Hamilton was really good, for starters. I didn’t think I was gonna cry, but I definitely did. It was SO amazing!
One of the places we visited on this day was Chinatown. We wanted to find a bathroom, but word to the wise; public bathrooms are hard to find in New York.
We ended up going into this restaurant and were immediately met with “how many people?” Filled with the pressure of his Minnesotan roots, Paul ended up getting us a table. But since we had a table, it felt rude to not order anything. We got some food, and ended up paying like 30 dollars just to use a bathroom.
At least they had water, though. We were incredibly dehydrated and drank a lot of their water.
We also went to Stonewall and got lost on our way back to Washington Square Park all because of google maps!
