Boston Vacation - Day 3 The Boston Science Museum

Day three of our vacation was Hobbes' birthday. Since we had finished the Freedom Trail, we gave him a few options for activities for the day. He chose to go to the Museum of Science, which turned out to be a great choice.

We took the T down to Mass Gen (Massachusetts General Hospital) and then walked down by the river over to the museum. We got there pretty much when it opened. A few buses full of school groups (I think, or maybe they were camps) were beginning to unload. The front of the museum is a bit baffling. I found it difficult to figure out which door we were supposed to go in through. The boys had a great time looking at the space exhibits, the medical technology exhibits, the models of boats from different time periods, the dinosaurs, and a room about, well, playground physics.

We went to the electricity show. That was really cool. The docent? emcee? resident scientist had a huge Van de Graaff generator and made several types of impressive (and LOUD) displays. For one, they modulated the frequency of the sparks so that it played the William Tell Overature - very cool.

There was also a room about the human body. In it they had a "Circular Tree of Life" showing the phylogenetic relationship of organisms. Being a microbiologist, I was mightily offended by this slice:

The Archaea and Bacteria are much larger divisions (and way more diverse) than the Eukaryotes. Just sayin'. And the weird thing was that I seemed to be the only person who noticed this.

At this point, Grandpa was done with his genealogy business, and came to the museum to meet us. We had tickets to go see a show in the newly refurbished, fully digital, stereo 3-D surround sound, Smell-o-tron 4000, Charles Hayden Plane'arium (that's a little 'in' joke for you South Park followers). The show started with a little intro that just showed the capabilities of the new projection system, and it was awesome. Then came the main feature - Undiscovered Worlds, which was all about the search for exoplanets. I'm pretty sure Sweetie and Grandpa fell asleep. You know how it is with the dark and the comfortable reclining chair and it's after lunch and that plane'arium mellow space music is going in the background - you just kind of drift off. But Calvin and Hobbes loved it.

We were pretty much done with the museum at that point, so we went back to Aunt M and Uncle B's house. It was hot and a little humid. We're not used to the humid part.

For Hobbes' birthday, we had a lobster boil. We got steamed lobsters from a place down the street and taught the boys to shuck ears of corn (and clean up afterwards). It was a good meal, although Calvin didn't like the lobster (even with butter!). Afterwards it was time for ice cream cake and presents. One second cousin almost blew out the candles before Hobbes had a chance to, but his dad saved it at the last second. It was funny. Hobbes got some good stuff, including a cell phone. Such a grown up boy.

Then Grandpa was tuckered out again.