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February Vaca­tion.

Bought house: check

Moved in: check

Made it through holi­days: check

Still win­ter: check

So what to do?! We deci­ded to take a mini-​vacation to Bos­ton. And it was the best deci­sion ever. Des­pite the rain/​sleet/​deluge that was about we mana­ged to time the weather well and expe­rience so many things new, and old, with Ben­ja­min. We ate at Fire & Ice and Waga­mama. We went to the MOS, the MFA, the Top of the Hub, & the Aqua­rium. We sta­yed at the Hil­ton Back Bay for 2 nights with a gelato bar in the lobby and had colds­tone. It was just fabu­lous family time.

I put my point and shoot to the task trying to demand high per­for­mance while still fit­ting in my poc­ket with my phone & keys. It tried it’s best to keep up with me.

First stop was the MOS (Museum of Science) - it’s crazy how much it hasn’t chan­ged since I was a kid — the basics of science are still just that! Basic! Howe­ver, the ‘exhi­bits’ of what a cas­sette tape is were a little off putting.

The next day we went to the aqua­rium. My mom came down for the day to hang out with us. She is recently visually impaired. Depth and sha­dows and monoch­rome are dif­fi­cult for her to dis­cern and the glass of the tanks was an inte­res­ting expe­rience for her. The octo­pus was hiding in the back of his ‘cage’ and mum couldn’t see him. She put her hand on the glass and wished he would come clo­ser. And he did — he tra­ver­sed right over, loo­ked her in the eye, and then went back to the cor­ner. It was pretty ama­zing. And also, I love jelly fish exhibits.

The Aqua­rium, like the MOS hasn’t chan­ged much since I was a kid and it’s been a bit since we took Ben­ja­min down. The photo on the left is from.. maybe ²⁰⁰⁴⁄₂₀₀₅ and although I tried to get the seals to coö­pe­rate they refu­sed. The water level is nearly the same though. *sniff*

Most of our days loo­ked like this — it gave a really neat fee­ling to the city.

Every once in a while we’d get a break in the clouds though and I loved the sha­dows in this old stone church.

One of the most sur­pri­singly inte­res­ting things we did was go to the Top of the Hub at the Pru­den­tial Cen­ter. I’d never been up there before and when we got to the top the skies clea­red up long enough for us to take the tour; which was actually really infor­ma­tive and not so boring! (I was skeptical)

Our last trip was to the Museum of Fine Arts. It was much less hit or miss than I thought it would be with the 10 year old boy. He LOVED the Egyp­tian exhi­bits and the musi­cal ins­tru­ments. He mana­ged to find a decent atten­tion span for the ‘clas­sics’ too. My most favo­rite part was this all sided mirro­red bottle collec­tion. My photo makes it look kind of like a pain­ting but it was fully three dimen­sio­nal and just STUNNING. It was pro­bably the only time I really regret­ted not having my pro-​camera gear with me. But I made the best of it!

We had a great time. He’s defi­ni­tely at the right age for the mix of child like won­der­ment and the abi­lity to keep him­self enter­tai­ned when it’s not all go. go. go.

~MelissaKoren