After breakfast we walked back across the highway overpass and down the Esplande to the Museum of Science.  Last night John had booked seats on an 11:30  Duck tour.   It is only a 25 minute walk  to the museum (Duck tour starting point) so we still had time for a leisurely breakfast.

 

The walkway over the four-lane highway.

They are renovating the bridge. It looks like a very large project. Should take a few years to complete.

 

 

The Esplanade – a very popular walking, jogging and biking path.   Our Duck

The Duck tour took us past many of the historic sites we have toured but also to other parts of the city.  Our driver was very funny, especially if another vehicle got in her way or was parked in the way.  Since she has a microphone and sound system in an open vehicle the other drivers had no problem understanding her displeasure.  Quite funny.  She related many silly, unimportant type things along with a history snapshot and running commentary of all the buildings we passed; many interspersed with her personal thoughts regarding it.  A nice, fun thing to do for 80-90 minutes.

Some of the very, very espensive homes in Beacon Hill. Some of these buildings sell for $16 million.   This is a prison – built on prime river-front property. The windows are inverted so the prisoners don’t have a nice view. We were back at the front of the Museum of Science at 1 pm, just in time for lunch.  We went to the Riverview Cafe in the museum and had  not-very-good fish and chips.  The chips were okay, but I don’t know what fish they used.  Neither John nor I were impressed.

The main attraction for me at the Museum of Science is a special exhibit called the Science of Pixar.  I love Disney/Pixar films so getting to see how they are made holds a lot of appeal.  During the weekends you need to make a reservation for a specific time to go in but since it was a weekday and close to school starting we were able to get a ticket for the next available entry – 10 minutes wait.

The exhibit was fabulous.  Really well done.  It took you through every stage of the creation of a computer animated film with filmed explanations of each task given by the actual employees that work in each department.  There were also hands-on  interactive centers where you could work on the skills yourself.

About a half hour after we started looking around were interrupted by a fire alarm and the entire museum was evacuated.  Boston’s finest showed up in a few minutes, checked everything out, reset the alarms and we were allowed back in to pick up where we had left off.

We spent at least a couple of hours reading, checking out the activities and listening to all the staff stories.  There were great examples of art work made by Pixar people and many of the characters around the displays.  If you are ever somewhere that has the exhibit, I highly recommend it.

You could adjust the colours of lights and features of the water around Dory. When we had exhausted all the Pixar information we used our general admission ticket to explore the rest of the museum.  We managed to work our way through two of the three floors before we left the building at 6:45 – 15 minutes before closing.  What a great place.  So many very different exhibits with many inter-active centers.  A great place to take your kids.  I loved this museum.  And you all know what I am like in a museum so that says someting.

A topographical scale map of Mt. Everest showing the climbing route.

 

 

A diorama of the construction of the pyramids.

 

 

Life-size dinosaurs

This section is for our daughter-in-law Carrie who is an artist.  All of the artwork is either macro or micro photography. Very very cool.

 I don’t know how well you can pick out the numbers beside the artwork above that corresponds to the description below.
There was an entire exhibit on optical illusions (M.C. Escher engravings included) and how the eye gets tricked.   The last display was a set of four famous faces that could be seen in geometric black and white images.   Close up they were just lines and shading but when you stand back the faces appeared

 

We made a quick stop at the grocery store for dinner supplies and headed back to the apartment to eat and have a  quite evening.  The apartment is very small with several things (like leaking taps and shower) needing  maintenance and it was very expensive by our standards, but the location is really great, with access to groceries, restaurants, the subway and near-by attractions.  Sometimes you just bite the bullet and go for it. Hotels and accomodations in Boston are VERY expensive. Even a small place like this (four story walk-up) would rent for $2500 per month or more.

And now it is time for me to climb into this bed and rest.  Tomorrow is going to be another enjoyable day.