Our Time with the Learned

Our drive from New York to Massachusetts was very easy and gorgeous. We went on a smaller highway through Connecticut and the trees were huge and lush; we even found a great classical station that calmed Che down and got Sabine to sleep. It was fairly uneventful until we got close to Boston and noticed tons of traffic backed up going in the opposite direction. We noticed about eight police cars all stopped, some of which had hit a small car that was rammed up against the divider. There were news reporters all around and helicopters flying up above. After watching the news we found out that we witnessed the outcome of a high-speed police chase. Exciting! No one was hurt, except for the driver whom the police punched in order to get cuffs on him.

We went straight into Cambridge and met up with a great old friend of ours, Max Grinnell, who was funny and entertaining as always. Max is an "urbanologist" and he answered our question from a previous post-- bucolic is to country as cosmopolitan is to city. I do not think Cesar is convinced that anything city could be good. He is a bit more like Thoreau, whom I am rereading in anticipation of visiting Walden Pond, who said "What is a house but a sedes, a seat?--better if a country seat." Our lunch lasted quite awhile and the kids were very well behaved considering the circumstances. The last time we were in Cambridge it seemed too crowded and dense, but this time we drove through some really nice neighborhoods and I could see the appeal. We headed to our hotel outside of Cambridge and hit a TON of traffic, but found our hotel easily and were pleased that our room was clean, big, and had a fridge and microwave. We are in Massachusetts for a couple of days so it is great that our hotel was not a big dump-- no roaches (of any variety) here!

Today Cesar had to work, so I played with the kids in the room and tried to convince them NOT to run around all over the place and jump from bed to bed. That did not work out too well. Luckily, Cesar was able to take a little break so we took the kids into Concord (this is where all my favorite Transcendentalist peeps hung out) and it was amazing! I loved the whole town, the shops, restaurants, houses,--everything was perfect. Besides wanting to see where Thoreau and Emerson chilled out (and were buried--Sleepy Hollow Cemetery looked like a really lovely place to spend eternity), we went to Concord because our favorite children's book publisher, Barefoot Books, has a flagship store there and they had a craft and story time event today. Here is a link to the store: http://www.barefootbooks.com/story/about_us/our_stores. I love how colorful and kid-centered the store is and we purchased some great books for the kids. On the way home we stopped at Whole Food to get some healthy food for the fridge and now I am about to convince the kids that they should take a nap...