A couple days of slow travel had brought us back to Boston and Holly wanted to visit Harvard University. No sense waiting when you can start scouting out Universities for your 8-year-old child. The university campus is lovely, full of large red brick buildings. We were impressed to find out that the main library, which is two stories tall, actually has nineteen stories of books with the rest being underground. The library is a historic building so they can’t change the outside and the only way to expand is to dig ever further down.
We talked to a couple of the students and they seemed very nice, well spoken and intelligent. The warm fall morning showed off the Harvard campus at its best. At $70,000 a year to attend it had better be a really nice campus. We had better start saving our pennies now.
We had lunch at Harvard then drove another hour south to Plymouth, Massachusetts. We could not leave Massachusetts without visiting Plymouth Rock. This would be another prime world schooling opportunity for Olivia. Massachusetts is such a historical state and is perfect for learning about the start of the United States.
We admired the famous Plymouth Rock, which according to the Park Ranger, the Mayflower certainly did NOT land on, but was the only big rock on the beach that the Mayflower did land. Next, we visited a 1:1 recreation of the Mayflower and marveled at how over 100 people sailed for 66 days across the Atlantic in such as small ship.
On the way out of town we passed a skate park so of course we had to stop so Olivia could have a bit of a skate.
We continued out of Massachusetts for the last time and drove to Providence, Rhode Island to spend the night at a Walmart. However, we soon found out that there was a very popular outdoor dance club right next to the Walmart with a very loud sound system. This was a problem, not just for the noise but the club’s customers almost completely filled up the Walmart parking lot. This was not going to be a good night between the loud music and the likelihood of raucous party-goers leaving the club later. We decided that the best course was to move to another nearby Walmart where we had a quiet evening.
The next day was special. We had left Sacramento Oct 14 exactly two years ago. To celebrate we decided that the best way to round out our New England adventures was to have a big seafood dinner. Spent the day doing a cleaning of Rover and full laundry then drove an hour and a half to southern Rhode Island to the Nordic Restaurant.
The Nordic Restaurant’s claim to fame is that it is an all-you-can-eat buffet featuring lobster, King Crab, oysters, clams, Prime Rib, steak and to top it all off a Hagen Das ice cream dessert bar. It was nicely decorated in a lodge theme and we dove right in on the freshly boiled lobster and King Crab. I had planned to eat six lobsters but was distracted by the King Crab so I was only able to eat three lobsters and three plates of King Crab.
The samplings of the oysters, clams were good too. Olivia, who does not eat seafood was happy with steak and Prime Rib.
I generally like to save my calories at a buffet for the high value items but I could not resist a Hagen Das root beer float and a creamsicle. While the Nordic buffet was quite expensive at $125 per adult, we felt it was a pretty good deal considering a lobster dinner with a single lobster in any nice restaurant New England would cost at least $50. It was rare even to see King Crab available. So three lobsters and three plates of King Crab alone would have cost at least two to three hundred dollars. As we finished dinner we felt that we had really capped off our visit to New England and was done with lobster and crab for a while.
After dinner we drove a little ways down the road to the border of Rhode Island and Connecticut where we found a nice, quiet Walmart to bed down. It works out really well that we save so much money on accommodations that we are able to splurge occasionally on fancy food.