Trip to Massachusetts - Day Two, Installment One

Woke up early as this would be our only full day to try and make it into Boston and do the Freedom Trail thing. Hotel breakfasts, no matter how super-nice they are, are kind of a hard thing to navigate when you are allergic to eggs and milk. I did manage to locate a bowl of oatmeal on my fourth pass through the dining room. I will just say that I couldn't’t find it because I was sleepy.
We headed into Lowell with high hopes, feeling really good about having made it this far. We even found our loft with no trouble. Couldn't’t figure out the parking deal, though. So I called up the Technology Tzar's girlfriend (we owe the lovely accommodations to them). She was in town on Sunday and he was not. Which was good because I have never met her (after, like, 2 years – maybe more?) and we really enjoyed visiting - without him there to worry about what we might say. She showed us her lab at the school and all the robots and parts and stuff. There was even a happy reunion between Andrew and the robot we got to borrow for the summer a couple of years ago.

And we had such a good time that we (well, I) didn’t leave on time to really “do” Boston. Oops.
We left, though, and had only a teeny bit of trouble finding our way to the freeway. After all – car I’m not used to in a city I’m not used to. Sigh. All in all, we got to the subway station with no problem and navigated the subway system with no problem, in spite of having to take connector buses due to construction. Now, I realize that this all sounds like I was very relaxed the whole time. I would like to point out that I was not.
It’s one thing to wander around a city with no agenda all by your grown-up self, but it is entirely different to be worried about the hydration, nourishment, safety, and entertainment and bedtime of your offspring. So, by the time we did all that, I was pretty tense, given the short amounts of sleep over the last week and all that navigating stuff. But we did it and it was a little hard to resist tossing my sunglasses up in the air and belting out, “We’re gonna make it after all!” – Mary Tyler Moore style.
We did enjoy the Freedom Trail and saw lots of cool stuff. We downloaded an MP3 audio tour, thinking that we’d go inside all the stops, but it was a little confusing in a few places and we spent a lot of time trying to figure out where we were in relation to our audio tour. And man! is that USS Constitution a long way from the rest of the trail. And a long way from the nearest subway stop. It’s the last stop and we didn’t make it all the way to the ship, but we got close enough to see it and take a picture for Dad.
Drew @ Boston Common:

Mother Goose's grave (!)

For Nana, even though I didn't get to spend much time there:

More tomorrow....