I beg your pardon...

...but I came across a rose garden - actually, it was the Kelleher Rose Garden, which is in the fens, and I found it on my way to the Museum of Fine Arts on Sunday.  I've never seen such a collection of roses, it was really beautiful.  All of these shots were taken with my iPhone, and it was a super-sunny day, so they aren't very good, but I had to share.

The fens are marshes, I guess, here in the middle of Boston. They must be part of the watershed for the Charles River.  I saw this bird in the fens, which I am not familiar with, but it must be some kind of water fowl.  Unfortunately, I did not have my Rebel with me, or my Olympus, just my iPhone, so I couldn't really zoom in and get a clear shot of him.  I don't know if you can tell from this picture, but he's pretty big.  He almost looks like a black heron... definitely bigger than any of the geese that were hanging around that day.

I have so many other photos, I can't keep up with them.  Here are some pictures from inside the old South Church on Boylston Street, where I went last night for an AA meeting:

We don't meet in the main chapel, but I had to peak in... I love all the stained glass.  And here are some buildings I noticed along the mile and half walk between my dorm and the church:

This is a long row of apartment buildings, I think. I just love the repetition.  You see this all over town.

The traffic at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Commonwealth Avenue - but I took the picture for that brick building on the corner.  I love all the chimneys.

The balcony is like a little sunroom, and I love the medallions over the third-story windiws and the ornate trim around the doors and windows...

That's all for now.  I still have some pictures from my afternoon with Paul and Cristiano on Saturday, which I will have to upload tomorrow.  I'm sorry I'm not being vigilant about chronology, but there are just so many pictures and so little time to share them with all three of you that read this! :-)

A serious moment...

Here's a sign that gives me pause every time I pass it, mostly because it is constantly being updated:

This digital counter is situated on the back of Fenway Park. There are several billboards to the left of it listing facts about gun violence and children, such as the fact that a child is killed by a gun every 3 hours in America. This is what the sign said as I was walking by it on Sunday afternoon, on my way to the Museum of Fine Arts.  I thought it must include the children who were killed in Aurora, Colorado that week...

But then this is what it said as I was walking home later that afternoon...

Here is what it said this morning, as I was walking over to Fenway Health for our meeting...

And this is what it said this afternoon... If you're counting, that's 32 kids killed by guns since some time last week... that is an unbearable reality.

Monday I've got Friday on my mind...

... mostly because I can't keep up with my photos.  And I have a bunch of reading to do for class in the morning, so this will be quick and dirty.

These are un-edited photos from my Olympus Stylus.

I mentioned in my last post that I walked to Cambridge on Friday afternoon. This is the view from the bridge to Cambridge from Fenway, of the bike path I blogged about last week. As you can see, it runs right along Storrow Drive on the right, and it's very narrow. Storrow is busy avenue pretty much all the time.

Boston University crew practice..

 This is a little wooden plank bridge that is part of the bike path - it juts out over the river because the base of the railroad bridge is anchored on the shoreline there.  As you can see, when there is one biker on the bridge, there's really not room for much else. 

And this is the Boston skyline, looking east on the river, from the bridge. I am zoomed in pretty far with my little point and shoot on this one.

These next 2 series are sunset progressions, shot using pretty much the same composition over time. It was a beautiful sunset. We were hanging out on a floating dock that is situated off the bike path, to the east of our neighborhood.  For these shots, I used the "sunset" scenic setting on my camera, which deepens the colors in the sky for me, so I get a truer representation of what I am seeing with my naked eye:

This series are some zoomed-in shots. The colors in the sky were amazing:

And these are the people who were watching the sunset with me:

 Koh, Janelle, Christopher (hamming it up!)

 Christiano, Paul, Janelle in back, Gabe and Ryan foreground (they have no idea the camera is on them)

 Julia, Christiano, Paul in back, Gabe and Ryan foreground again

 Allegra and Koh (a more intentional shot)

 Christiano, Paul, Janelle, Ryan, Christopher, Manny

Our motley crew - look at that sky!

Just two more shots - the water was purple at the end of sunset, and we were being watched by some ducks... we were all very careful not to feed them, but they were convinced that they could break us down, so they hung around a long time...

Goodnight.

Come on, Baby, photo safari... come on a safari with me...

So on Friday, I decided it was time to get serious about my photo safari.  All of the photos in this blog entry were taken with my iPhone.

Every morning, I walk 2 blocks from the dining hall in Warren Towers to the BU Bus stop, and I pass by this fountain.  But I wasn't noticing it. On Friday, however, I was looking for photo opportunities, and suddenly it was there. The whole world looks different when I look at it with a photographer's eyes.


We had a short break at lunch, before Brian gave his presentation, so I decided to use that time to take some pictures. It gave me a great excuse to grab some alone time and listen to some music, too.  There was a neighborhood we walked through the other day that had really cool wrought iron railings, and I did not take pictures, so I quickly walked back over there to get some shots.  Here's what I saw during lunch.

Boston has a subway, the T, but is also has the Hubway, where you can rent a bike to ride anywhere in the city. There are Hubway stations all over. This one is near the Boston University Department of Public Health.

They also have a lot of old-fashioned street lamps here. These probably have LED bulbs now, but I can totally imagine them being fueled by gas back in the early 1900's, can't you?

Blunch is a sandwich shop about 2 blocks from where we have class in the mornings.  They can give you ANY of their sandwiches on GLUTEN FREE BREAD.  You can guess where I will be getting my lunches most of the time for the next three weeks... I also found out that the Rhetty To Go lunches we can pick up in the dining hall can also be made on gluten free bread. So, I'm starting to see an end to this daily salad for lunch rut, which has already gotten old.

This is the neighborhood I was looking for.  It's one of the nicer streets on the south end, according to one of my classmates. I love the combination of the handrails and the blue doors here.

Here is a shot looking down the street. Almost every house has a different style of wrought iron railing, which I think gives the street a lot of character. Boston is way too big for me, but if I had to live here, I would want to live on this street.

These buildings are also very near our classroom. I love the architecture here. Something about the roofline just feels so old-fashioned to me.

This is New China, a little one-room takeout place near the classroom. The food is pretty good there, but I like this shot because of the repetitive pattern in the buildings. They seem to go on forever...

After lunch, we head over to the data lab, which is in the University's Medical library, about 2 blocks away. Every day we pass by the emergency room, and I look up at these walkways which remind me of hamster tubes.

And just across the street from the library is this little building. I just really like the wrought-iron railing on these little balconies.

So, that's my photo safari from Friday afternoon.  Later in the day, I walked across the Charles River to Cambridge, and then had dinner down by the river at sunset with my classmates. I've got a bunch of photos from those events, but it's bedtime, so they will have to wait for tomorrow's blog entry. Tomorrow I plan to go to the Museum of Fine Art, where I will not be able to take pictures inside, so it will be nice to have more pictures from Friday to blog about.

Riding on the Charles River

The heat wave finally broke here in Boston, thanks to the rains yesterday.  While it was kind of a drag having to walk around downtown in the pouring rain, it was worth it.  Here's a shot of the rainy weather from the window outside our data lab on the 12th floor of the Boston University Medical Library:

So, let me start by saying that as lovely as Boston and the Charles River are, riding on the Dr. Paul Dudley White Bike Path here is NOTHING like riding on the Erie Canal in Syracuse.  For one thing, you don't get to see the Boston University crew team members practicing on the Erie Canal.

Also, the Charles River has some views of some really beautiful parts of the Boston skyline...

... and the Eric Canal isn't quite as polluted as the Charles River.

There are also some beautiful bridges on the Charles...

 

... and some really spectacular boat houses....

And all of this is in downtown Boston. This picture shows you how close the bike path is to the four-lane road that runs along the river.  So, while you are technically biking on a nature trail, you are also constantly surrounded by the sounds of traffic and the city.  On top of that, the path is pretty narrow in many spots, and you have runners and bikers traveling with you in both directions, at different speeds, so that you have to pass them, and they have to pass you, often when someone else is coming in the opposite direction.  It's a little nerve-wracking for a small-city girl like me, to say the least, but it was worth it to be out in the open air and to be near the water.  I think the next time, I will try an early-morning ride and see if that's any quieter, at least in terms of the traffic.

The other alternative to the bike path is to ride on the actual city streets themselves. I did a little of that to get to the bike path today, but only on the little street here where my dorm is, which isn't too heavily trafficked.  Most of the other streets are more like the photo below, however, and I am absolutely terrified about riding on them. I don't know if you can tell, but that white car down the road doesn't really care about being in the bike lane, and that happens quite a bit, not to mention the times when you might have 1 or 2 other bikers in that little lane alongside you between the parked cars and the cars flying by you on the road. And this guy's not wearing a helmet! No, I am definitely NOT an urban biker. Good to know!