Take Me Out to the Ballgame

Today was our last day in Boston and we spent it visiting two of the city’s iconic institutions. The Red Sox at Fenway Park and Harvard University.

We started off by taking a tour of Fenway Park, the oldest ballpark in the MLB and also one of the smallest. During our tour, we first visited the oldest seats in major league baseball, installed in the 1930s (but were still pretty comfortable) and then arguably the coolest seats in baseball atop the famous Green Monster with a great view of the ballpark. We then went past Fenway Farms, which is a vegetable garden on the roofs of Fenway where they grow a lot of the veg used in the food served at the concession stands throughout the park.

Then we went into the press boxes behind homeplate, where there are loads of photos and front pages of historic Red Sox successes, including all of the front pages from the day after they broke the Curse of the Bambino, which was an 86 year championship drought lasting from 1918 to 2004. Finally we saw the lone red seat out in the right field bleachers which is the site of the longest home run ever hit at Fenway Park where it landed on the head of a fan.

After this we stopped off for lunch at the Friendly Toast in MIT before walking up to take a student led tour of Harvard University.

Our tour guide Eli took us round a number of the different sites of Harvard whilst explaining some of the history of this world famous university. These included Harvard Yard, which contains the Statue of Harvard that contains 3 lies, the various Halls of Harvard (and which famous people have lived in them in the past including JFK, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, both before dropping out to become billionaires, and Natalie Portman to name a few) and some of the academic buildings. He also explained some of the quirks and traditions that take place at Harvard, ranging from a dining room where only freshman can eat to the Primal Scream that takes place before exam season every year.

We ended our day back at Fenway Park for the series finale against the Philadelphia Phillies. We were sat up in the Sam Adam’s Party deck which had a great atmosphere and gave us a brilliant view of the whole field. The game stayed close all the way to the last out with the Red Sox having a chance to win the game in the final innings. Unfortunately, they couldn’t convert this chance and the Phillies ran out 3-1 winners. Regardless it was a great evening and we even had a little bit of a familiar experience from home in the 8th inning stretch.