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Jul. 12th, 2014 06:06 amMy superstitions, let me show you them:
Yesterday I bought a 7-day pass to the T, which costs $19. I paid with a $20 bill and got a single coin back in change, and in the dim light of the station I assumed it was a Sacajawea dollar coin, because those are standard dollar change in Chicago, and tossed it in my pocket.
But no -- emptying my pockets this morning, I found it's a Susan B. Anthony dollar. Which doesn't really matter, except that they were made much earlier. It happens to be a Susan B. Anthony dollar from 1979, and mum taught me as a tyke that coins from your birth year are lucky. So I have a new lucky Boston charm!
Yesterday was fun. I did the Boston Public Library at Copley, which has the secret hidden Sargent gallery, a series of murals painted by John Singer Sargent in what amounts to a third-floor stairwell. I'll post some photos of it eventually; I particularly love the Pagan Gods side of the mural set. Then I went to the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum, which I will not post photos of because no photos are allowed, but I did get to tell the full story of the Gardner Theft to a friend, and I love telling that story.
There's actually a great narrative way to do it -- you start on the 3rd floor in the Gothic Room so you can introduce them to ISG herself in the painting Sargent did of her (it was a very Sargent themed day), and then if you take the stairs in the next room down, you basically come out right into the room where the Vermeer and the Rembrandt were, which leads into the room where the Degas watercolors were. Then you enjoy the museum, and stop on the ground floor in the room just past the sarcophagus to pay your respects to the second portrait Sargent did of her, when she was eighty.
It's very striking, coming down the stairs and seeing the empty frame where Storm On The Sea of Galilee once hung. Of the stolen paintings, the Vermeer is the most valuable; it was one of only 34 Vermeers in the world. But I prefer Storm On The Sea of Galilee, because I think it's a more interesting painting and because Rembrandt painted himself into it -- he's the one in the cap, looking out at the viewer from midships.
We went to the MFA, got SO EPICALLY LOST, and finally ended up at the 21st Amendment, a bar I had always wanted to try, which turned out to be cozy but pleasant. I had a sparerib grilled cheese sandwich, which was AMAZING.
Then somehow I killed my phone's battery so hard that it took a few hours to notice it was charging. I was a little freaked out it might be dead for good, but it was fully charged when I woke up this morning, so yay for that :D
Today I'm off to do the Freedom Trail and the Aquarium. I may not have feet by the end of the day, I won't lie. On the other hand, I keep applying Chicago scale to Boston, and the city blocks aren't nearly as long here as they are there, so I keep being surprised at how FAST I get everywhere. I think they're about comparable in size, but I'm moving about in a much smaller radius than I would in Chicago.
Anyway, I'm heading out to Finagle A Bagel, which used to do such massive bagels for breakfast that I would eat half, then shove the other half in my backpack for safekeeping until lunch time. I have no real nostalgia for Dunkin Donuts, but Finagle A Bagel holds a special place in my heart.
Yesterday I bought a 7-day pass to the T, which costs $19. I paid with a $20 bill and got a single coin back in change, and in the dim light of the station I assumed it was a Sacajawea dollar coin, because those are standard dollar change in Chicago, and tossed it in my pocket.
But no -- emptying my pockets this morning, I found it's a Susan B. Anthony dollar. Which doesn't really matter, except that they were made much earlier. It happens to be a Susan B. Anthony dollar from 1979, and mum taught me as a tyke that coins from your birth year are lucky. So I have a new lucky Boston charm!
Yesterday was fun. I did the Boston Public Library at Copley, which has the secret hidden Sargent gallery, a series of murals painted by John Singer Sargent in what amounts to a third-floor stairwell. I'll post some photos of it eventually; I particularly love the Pagan Gods side of the mural set. Then I went to the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum, which I will not post photos of because no photos are allowed, but I did get to tell the full story of the Gardner Theft to a friend, and I love telling that story.
There's actually a great narrative way to do it -- you start on the 3rd floor in the Gothic Room so you can introduce them to ISG herself in the painting Sargent did of her (it was a very Sargent themed day), and then if you take the stairs in the next room down, you basically come out right into the room where the Vermeer and the Rembrandt were, which leads into the room where the Degas watercolors were. Then you enjoy the museum, and stop on the ground floor in the room just past the sarcophagus to pay your respects to the second portrait Sargent did of her, when she was eighty.
It's very striking, coming down the stairs and seeing the empty frame where Storm On The Sea of Galilee once hung. Of the stolen paintings, the Vermeer is the most valuable; it was one of only 34 Vermeers in the world. But I prefer Storm On The Sea of Galilee, because I think it's a more interesting painting and because Rembrandt painted himself into it -- he's the one in the cap, looking out at the viewer from midships.
We went to the MFA, got SO EPICALLY LOST, and finally ended up at the 21st Amendment, a bar I had always wanted to try, which turned out to be cozy but pleasant. I had a sparerib grilled cheese sandwich, which was AMAZING.
Then somehow I killed my phone's battery so hard that it took a few hours to notice it was charging. I was a little freaked out it might be dead for good, but it was fully charged when I woke up this morning, so yay for that :D
Today I'm off to do the Freedom Trail and the Aquarium. I may not have feet by the end of the day, I won't lie. On the other hand, I keep applying Chicago scale to Boston, and the city blocks aren't nearly as long here as they are there, so I keep being surprised at how FAST I get everywhere. I think they're about comparable in size, but I'm moving about in a much smaller radius than I would in Chicago.
Anyway, I'm heading out to Finagle A Bagel, which used to do such massive bagels for breakfast that I would eat half, then shove the other half in my backpack for safekeeping until lunch time. I have no real nostalgia for Dunkin Donuts, but Finagle A Bagel holds a special place in my heart.
