On Day 08, our goal for the day was to make it to Boston / Needham (photos 1-2). But first, we had a nice Saturday morning brunch at Dutchman’s Bagels in Brunswick with Andrea’s cousin Chris. The old mill building has been converted into a restaurant and event space, with a small theatre area. The bagels were gigantic. We had a nice visit for about 90 minutes and then it was time to hit the road.

We drove to Boston (photos 4-7) and rushed, rushed, rushed to get to the Museum of Science. Although to be honest, my real goal was really the Charles Hayden planetarium that is attached. I had hoped to see one of their “Exploring the Universe” videos, but most things were sold out for the day by the time we got there. The schedule wasn’t going to work very well for any of the three days, so we opted to explore the museum (photos 8-11, 14-15) and to catch Destination Mars at 4:30 p.m. (photos 12-13).

We grabbed a fast lunch in their cafeteria and then wandered around for an hour. Despite the museum being fairly busy (not surprising for a Saturday), we saw dinosaurs, an arctic exhibit with icy walls, and an overview of all the planets outside the planetarium. Destination Mars was cool, with 180-degree reclined views. I would have loved to spend some time in the gift shop, but the museum closed at 5:00 p.m.

The drive to Needham where Andrea’s cousins (Scott, Dana and Henry) live was easy to plot in the GPS, but not so easy to drive. A torrential downpour hit as we left the museum. We were avoiding the toll highways (which said they only worked with electronic Easy Pass which we didn’t have installed, so we weren’t sure how that would work!), but many of the side streets were completely flooded (photos 16-19). We made it to the cousins’ house, although they were away for the weekend, and settled in with time to do some laundry! Exciting stuff, I know.

However, we went out to a little Thai restaurant nearby called The Little Spoon, which was excellent. We got another thunderstorm as we were heading back to the house, with a small detour to a 7-11 for some basic groceries.

As you can see, it was a bit of a lighter day. We still drove 243 km, and the rain was no fun, but we only did 29 photos curated down to 19.

2023-07b July – Day 08 To Boston

19 photos