2018 FALL ADVENTURE - 09/23

Take me out to the Ball Park with a side of Botticelli!

Day 2 in Boston started with a tour of Fenway Park. Normally, I wouldn’t put a tour of a baseball field on my dance card, but somehow Boston + Fenway Park seemed like a must see even for a sporting bonehead like myself. After touring this amazing and delightful ball field, I think I’m a Red Socks fan. I know. I know. How could you, you ask. Well blame it on the Monster Seats. There was just something so historic and so accessible about Fenway Park, I was smitten when I laid eyes on the field for the first time. I swear, if they had been playing in Boston tonight. I would have been in those bleachers when the 7^th inning stretch came around.

Score!

A Fan is Born

After our stop and the museum of baseball we went to visit the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Isabella Gardner might well have been America’s first art collector and here wealth ensured that many of the European Masters would find their way to our shores. She built a “temple” to house these wonders and then put it all on display with very strict instructions that nothing was to be changed after her death. And so it remains. It’s quite a collection to be sure and there’s also a mystery theft. 2 Rembrants and a Vemeer were heisted from the collection some years back. There’s more to learn about that.

 Spanish Dancer by John Singer Sargent

Sargent was friends with Isabella and actually was the first artist in residence at the museum that she built.  The third floor Gothic room houses a great portrait done of her by Sargent as well. (Check it out on the web site.)

The central unifying space of the museum is this amazing court yard.

Here is the link to the museum web site, it is worth a visit:  Gardner Museum Web Site

I think we wore Wendy's feet out today, here she is in here own little cubical on the train back to our abode for the evening.  She was happy to just be off her feet.

Wish we had a bit more time in Boston, but the summer homes of Newport await. We are off in the morning.