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Harvard University

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grannola
grannola
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Harvard University

  • September 23, 2006
  • Rated 2 of 5 by grannola from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia
Harvard University

We went to Harvard to buy a t-shirt. We thought it would be fun for the kids to have Harvard shirts. We decided to park the car and take a walk around the famous University.

Harvard is of course, huge. To get there from Boston, you follow Massachusetts Avenue right across a bridge to Cambridge. The first thing you see in Cambridge is MIT. We kept going until we found the main Harvard campus. We got to the University late in the morning (around 11am). It was in late August, before school started. The time of year when you know you're in a university town by the number of moving vans you see.

We had to circle the block several times to find a place to park, which was fine, because it gave us a nice view of the main campus wall and other buildings. We eventually found a spot on a side street, near the “Harvard Book Store”. The Harvard Book Store is just that, a book store, unlike most campus bookstores, it did not seem to be overflowing with Harvard University merchandise. We walked across the street and entered through a gate that said “Enter and gain wisdom”.

On the other side of the gate there were many historic buildings and the Harvard commons. This is where we found the statue of the founder of the university, John Harvard. We wandered around aimlessly for several minutes looking for an official bookstore, or any information. There were a few signs pointing to some buildings, but most of the buildings only had the name of the building on them. Many of the buildings had signs saying that university ID was required to enter the buildings.

Finally, we went into a building and asked for directions. The guard on duty didn’t seem to know much about where things were, but did provide a map of all the libraries on campus.

By this point, we needed to make a pitstop and went looking for a washroom. We went to a little diner across the street, where we were going to order something to eat (they were advertising Sweet Potato Fries), but they had no restroom, so we went down the street looking for a public washroom.

Down the street we finally found the Harvard Information Centre. Inside they had public restrooms, historic tours by University students, postcards for sale, and coupons for a store run by students. The tours last for about an hour and they are free. If only we’d seen this first!

Anyway, we left there, went to the closest t-shirt store, bought several shirts for reasonable prices. The 8-year-old got a shirt/hat combo for $20, adult shirts were about $15 each. We also bought some pencils for about 50 cents each.

Harvard: Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.

Recommendation, go, but make sure you find the info centre outside the Harvard walls first.

From journal Road Trip Part II--New England

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