Wednesday was our last full day in Boston, and we certainly packed a lot in. Tim went off 'sploring on his own, on a mission to get bits and pieces he wanted for machining and electronics projects. Meanwhile, Dana and Richard and I visited three museums.

We began at the Mapparium, which doesn't allow any photography, and perhaps this is for the best. The experience is difficult to justify with words: you're inside of a 3 storey tall globe, made entirely of stained glass. It represents the world as it was politically in 1935, when the globe was constructed. Things have changed since then geopolitically, but not geographically, and it was amazing to look all around, up and down, and be surrounded by the vastness of our planet. 

We then walked over to the Museum of Fine Art and had a nice, quiet, elegant lunch, then on to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, which is best known for a) the incredible 5 storey courtyard at its centre, full of luxuriant gardens and sculptures and b) the yet unsolved heist. The museum has left the empty frames on the wall from which the paintings were stolen. Quite the feat, given that they were on the second or third floor. Two snapshots I will hold in my mind: a couple of children absorbed in something, perhaps drawing, busily scribbling away, on their bellies in the courtyard garden (picture included below), and a young woman, bald and wearing a surgical mask, clearly very ill, sitting contemplatively at the edge of the courtyard, finding some sort of serenity, or at least I hoped so.

After the Gardner, we walked over to Fenway Park to get some Red Sox souvenirs, and to replace the cap I'd lost during the marathon. Then Richard and Dana caught the T back to the apartment as I wandered back on foot, detouring through Copley and the Prudential for one last kick at the shopping can. 

And of course I took more pictures of blossoms and the Common, and the city.

We went out for dinner with Betsey and Trish, Dana and Richard, to a lovely Italian restaurant over toward the South Station. Unfortunately it was raining when we left, and raining even harder when we walked back to Dana and Richard's apartment, so it was a bit chilly for me in a dress and bare legs. I don't get out often, and when I do I dress up, so the suffering was in the name of fashion.

The next morning, we went back out to Sherburn to retrieve Tim's car, and then we began our journey back home. More on that later.