Traveling Impressions

Day 5: Providence to Cambridge to Amherst

6:56am Train leaves for Boston
8:00am Take metro/subway/whatever they call it to Cambridge
11:00am Metro/subway/whatever they call it back to boston
12:00pm Bus leaves for Springfield, Massachusetts
2:15pm Bus leaves for Amherst
3:30pm Rent a car and talk to administrative office at Amherst

Aye que, what a day. Lots of travel. I barely remember waking up in Providence this morning. OH WAIT. Yes I do! My glorious mother who is wise in all things has the amazing ability to read a ticket that says "departure 6:56am" as "departure 7:25am" and due to this slight oversight I got to hear the wondrous phrase, "Oh wait. We have to leave in four minutes," as I'm leisurely brushing my teeth. Oh the joy. A rushed ride to the train station and running to catch the train immediately followed, though we jumped on board just in the nick of having 10 minutes to spare. So we were fine. But still, woah, rough start. After that we had just over an hour train ride that was absolutely painless. Except for the sun that was blaring in my eyes the whole time. The terrain seemed to be getting prettier, but I couldn't see anything but brightness, so I randomly snapped some pictures and wasn't disappointed with the view:

This one shows the brightness pretty well. I couldn't actually look directly into that. 

See? The landscape is actually becoming pretty now.











So we got to Boston, and though we didn't see much, my first impression was good. Seemed like a bright and exciting city that I'd love to see more of sometime. We jumped on the metro (I think it's called the T in Boston, but I think of it as a metro, so I'm just sticking with that terminology) and headed over to Cambridge to visit Harvard. I have absolutely zero intention of applying to Harvard, but it seemed like a shame to not go see it seeing as we were so close. And boy, I'm glad we went--I liked it a lot better than I was expecting. Cambridge is really a pretty little city and there was just something classy about the whole experience. Maybe it was just the historic nature of the area that evoked almost a patriotic sentiment to the town. 

Take this for instance (I had to make it really big so you could read the inscription). This building existed before the Revolutionary War. What? This building is older than The United States of America. It's hard to not feel patriotic when you see it--it's been here through the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, Persian Gulf, and Iraq. It's survived everything. Blows my mind.


Because I'm on a history rant here, I'll show this building next:

It's pretty interesting to look at, I think. It is primarily a Civil War memorial. It dedicated 3-5 lines per person who was associated with Harvard (student, donor, professor etc.) who died in the Civil War. Each inscription gave the year of death, the person's name, the person's birthday, and the battle in which they died. It was pretty somber. Interesting tidbit we overheard from a tour guide: Only Northern soldiers who died are given an inscription even though some Harvard grads or professors fought for the confederates. That sort of broaches an uncomfortable debate. One one side, the individual deaths of the Confederate soldiers are just as tragic as the deaths of a Union soldier and their lives deserve some sort of veneration. On the other hand, it would have felt really wrong to the people who were creating this memorial to honor the enemy along with the "good guys." I guess it just made me consider our definitions of good and evil. While I definitely believe the North was in the moral right, it is hard to just classify all of the southerners as racists who should be obliterated from our preservation of memories from this war. Defining one side as wholly good or wholly evil is especially hard when both sides share a common background, either as Americans or as affiliates of the same school. Okay philosophical tangent over. 

Harvard.

This felt very Harvard to me: the silent quad, the overlooking chapel, the logically symmetrical and highly colonial architecture. 











After our mostly historical tour of the campus we headed back to Boston and caught a train to Springfield. Springfield isn't particularly significant. For us it was just a pretty sketchy bus station that served as a transfer spot to get on a different bus to Amherst. 

Yeah those would be rusted nails just poking through the roof. I was confused.











Then we started driving to the middle of nowhere. It was so beautiful.

We got into Amherst at this dinky little bus station and walked to go rent a car:

The town of Amherst is just adorable. I think every town we've gone to has been prettier than the next. Providence is prettier than Princeton; Boston prettier than Providence; Cambridge prettier than Boston; Amherst prettier than Cambridge. It feels truly small college town--the only reason anyone would be in Amherst has some relation to the school. Plus then when we got to the admissions office, this was the view from the parking lot:

Amherst as a place is just charming. We tour the school and get into the nitty gritty details then, but it really is just a lovely area and I'm excited to learn more about the school itself in the morning.