L came by in the early afternoon and we went to the Gardner Museum. It's the former residence of Isabella Gardner; now it features a lovely gift shop and a little restaurant where you can have tarragon chicken salad with a pita. I am not sure if Mrs. Gardner would be happy or appalled (until you show her the profits).
The Gardner's main attraction, outside of the artwork, is a four-storey covered courtyard that features statues, a mosaic from a Roman villa, and many lovely plantings, like Canterbury Bells. Unfortunately you cannot go into the atrium, but it's flooded with sunlight, and is really spectacular.
After our jaunt there, we went to Cambridge, which seems to have red bricks everywhere--even the sidewalks are paved with red brick, as is the South End neighborhood where I am staying. It's all so 19th Century and lovely. And crowded. Boston always seems very crowded, perhaps more crowded than New York, but I liked it nonetheless. Even the sparrows were crowding us as we sipped cool beverages. They were more aggressive than New York pidgeons.
L and I shopped up a storm, sufficiently enough to have our parking validated. L found a real bargain--a DVD featuring Hitchcock's Sabotage and The Lodger. I finally met L's husband, F, about whom I have only heard of all these years. L conked out during the movie, which F tells me is her custom. I had not seen The Lodger for many years. It's quite good, plus, it's silent.
F and L drove me home. Boston is currently still entrenced in it's "Big Dig". I cannot adequately explain it, but they are replacing every highway with a new highway. They are also submerging some of them. It's all very confusing, and expensive, and to a newcomer, impossible to figure out. You're driving on one highway, and then you're suddenly driving next to another empty one that's either impending or defunct.
This is why I stick to mass transit. So clean and traffic-free.
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