mit

I woke up too early, I always wake up early when I'm sleeping in hotels.

Today we're visiting both Harvard and MIT.

For anyone who plans to visit both in one day, here was our plan that maximizes the places you can explore.

Harvard

Arrive the museum at 9 a.m.

1. Harvard Museum of Natural History ($10 for students, takes an hour min)
   1. Harvard Museum of Ancient Near East (close by, 3 floors of Eastern civilization artifacts)
2. Science center (Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments)
3. Memorial Hall
4. Gund hall (Druker Design Gallery)
5. John Harvard Statue
6. Widener Library (Harvard ID required)
7. Harvard Art Museum (Free admission, an hour min as well)
8. Harvard Square
9. Harvard book store

Get lunch nearby, we went to Hokkaido Ramen. I'd give it a 8/10, +1 because it was a cold day and the broth warmed us up.

MIT

Get here around 3 p.m.

1. Great Dome (grab a picture here)
2. Stata Center
3. MIT Science Museum (closes at 5, so get here around 3:15?)

After the museum, you can cross the Harvard Bridge to Newbury Street for shopping and dinner.

Newbury Street

Some places we went

• UNIQLO
• Muji
• TJ Maxx.
• Anime Zakka
• Trident Booksellers & Cafe
• DeLuca's Market

Some thoughts

Overall, I found Harvard a more interesting place to explore than MIT, it might have something to do with us getting to MIT Great Dome at 4:20 p.m., and we were losing daylight, and we didn't get to go to the museum which closes at 5 p.m. I was blamed by A for spending too much time at the bookstore.

The Natural History museum was fun, it had glass flowers, pretty rocks, lifelike mammals around the world, insects, birds, fossils, and more. Connected to it was the Peabody Museum of Archeology & Ethnology, one of the world's oldest anthropology museum. You could see Maya monuments, artifacts by Native American communities, objects traded by 18th century Boston ship captains.

The Art museum was really nice as well, although we spent ~45 min speedrunning the place because we wanted to be on time for MIT. Maybe that's not such a good strategy for museums, instead of maximizing your surface area, and catching an eye of every painting and artwork, you're supposed to slow down, observe it from all angles, notice what feelings geyser up from inside you, whether positive or negative, or just enjoy the work of artists who poured their heart and soul, taking the leap to pursue their artistic passion, materializing their past experiences, their innovative, unconventional ideas, into something physical, something visceral.

The Harvard book store, specifically the used section below ground, was kind of a let down, I didn't find any good books there. The new books were expensive and well, new. I'm feel strongly against buying new books nowadays, it feels weird. I'd rather buy a book that someone else used to leave at their coffee table to show off to their guests that they're book readers, folded in their hands burning under the sun while they read in the balcony, or books that sat in someone's shelf collecting dusts until the owners decided that it could be in better hands.

The Great dome was cool, I never knew what was inside, and now I do. It was classrooms, research labs, lecture halls, study spaces, etc. The interesting thing about MIT that A observed is all the buildings are connected really well. You could possible get from class to your dorm barely even stepping foot outside.

Newbury street is a great way to end the day. There are tons of shops and food places here. Also right by Prudential Center, which houses Eataly.