So Jake decides he wants to check out schools in Boston, just great.. can i drop him off in Quincy and put him on the T? I guess not.. so we have to drive to Boston. I get the shakes just thinking about it.... I have been back there a few times since the 80s and swear, every time i drive to Boston i get frustrated.... So we put the address of the Double Tree Hotel in the GPS and head off. Dropped Meg off @ Amy's sister for the night and the 3 of us continued on. MASS pike was busy as usual, even on a Sunday of a holiday weekend (Columbus Weekend). As we get into Boston we see a Double Tree Hotel right off the highway in Cambridge but checking the GPS we still had 5 miles to go so we pass the hotel and make our way further into Boston to find "our" hotel. Cross the Charles and make a right... follow the river driving a few miles.. turn right again, re-cross the Charles... turn right again and now we're headed back following the river in the opposite direction. Finally the GPS announces "your destination is on the left in .5 miles" so we look up and guess what we see.. THE SAME HOTEL WE JUST PASSED!... now i realize the city of Boston has no control over the directions my GPS gives me BUT I DON"T CARE! So we check in (early afteroon at this point) and decide to walk around. We headed over to Harvard to see what there was to see and maybe try to find Will Hunting.. Didn't see him but there was a street festival going on. seemed like 10 blocks of Cambridge were closed off, lots of food and vendors and some bands playing.. People seemed to be enjoying themselves, i wasn't, i don't like Boston.
(view from hotel)
We walked along the Charles River on the way back to the hotel. it was kind of nice, if you like scenic parks and stuff...
Sunday night we took a cab (i knew better than to try and drive more in boston) to dinner at a nice place amy found. It was a Brazilian BBQ restaurant which was really good.
Got up early Monday and drove, yes drove, to Northeastern University. Traffic was light but of course it wasn't a smooth ride. GPS said turn right... but there was NO RIGHT to make. Thankfully i have good directional skills, i worked it out on my own and we made it to the campus without too much trouble.
We did our tour of Northeastern. My impression before seeing it wasn't all that good but by the end of the tour I really liked the school and the 5 year program which includes an internship.
I was really surprised at how they managed to give you the feeling of a (somewhat) traditional campus in the middle of a city. I liked the contemporaryness (is that a word?) of the school. The people we met were all very nice and did a great job representing the school.
Next stop was Boston University. Back in the car for more city driving. But I wasn't too worried, check a map and it wasn't far. Relatively uneventful gettting there and i was shocked to find plenty of parking on the street right in front of the BU admissions building. We checked in and waited in the admissions building for the tour to start. i was not liking BU as much, based solely on appearance. The office was a converted browestone or something like that.. felt very formal and stuffy. Brick, ivy, dark wood... Then we met one of the tour guides... he rubbed me the wrong way too.. came across like a politician. but whatever. who am i to judge.
We avoided the politician and hook up with a tour guide named Megan who was in the Communcation program (Jake's interest at this time are in that area) and walked around the BU campus.
I didn't love the setting for BU, too much in the city for my liking but Jake liked it.
We got to see the student union, the library and a dorm as we walked around. The "campus" seemed much bigger than NU and i'm not sure if that is good or bad.
The third and final stop for the day was Emerson College. Back in the car for a quick ride to the center of Boston. quick? did i use that word? oh, meant to say torturous! Looked at the map, looked at my watch and said we have plenty of time. We'll stop and grab a bite to eat once we get downtown. HA! Jumped on some highway like road for a few exits and got off near downtown. GPS says 1 mile to go and suddenly traffic is at a dead stop. Once again relying on my keen sense of direction I opt to ignore the GPS and make a left... i'll just drive down a few blocks, make a right and i'll be right where i want to be... except after 1 block the road ends and my only turning option is a left since the road is one way. 10 minutes later i'm sitting in the exact same spot as i was before i took matters into my own hands... so we wait.. and wait.. traffic is at a crawl.. finally we start to move and what do we find? the stupid road we want to cross IS CLOSED for some stupid race. The road is full of runners. I can't go straight, i can't turn left...i'm stuck in bumper to bumper traffic, i'm slamming the steering wheel and using profanity. We turn right.. the opposite direction we need to go in... we keep going and going there is no way to make a left to get back where we need to go. Finally make a right and jump back on the same highway like road i was on before. this time we stayed on it in hopes of going past the school and the race and then we could circle back. That worked and we eventually found our way to the address we were given. drove around a bit and found a parking lot, walked up to the main street right at the Boston Common. we grabbed a quick bite and headed over to the admissions office. You'd have no idea you were in a college. It looks like any city block and if it wasn't for banners saying Emerson College on them you'd just assume everything was apartments and office buildings. It'd be pretty cool if you liked living in a city.. i don't. But it isn't about me.. we did our tour. It started out good but the 2 people leading it were droning on and on and on and after about 90 minutes Jake had had enough. We bailed and hightailed it out of Boston. I didn't even take any pictures @ Emerson. Emerson is a highly regarded school but I don't think Jake liked it.
End of the day - Amy and i really liked Northeastern. Jake liked BU the best. Nobody liked Emerson.
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