My visit to MIT was my first to any of the Boston area chapters so I was pretty excited to see it from the student perspective. I live about a twenty minute drive from MIT and I never really knew anything about that part of Cambridge so I definitely had a good time exploring my backyard!
It was pretty gray and rainy all week, so I ended up not doing too much walking around. MIT is not the prettiest campus either, in terms of old gray buildings, but the school was founded in 1861 and is full of engineers, so maybe it doesn't bother them. Campus is definitely in a cool party of town, though. Kendal Square is right on east end of campus, which is filled with cool restaurants, has a branch of the Coop, and is right on the T (Boston's subway system) red line. The Charles River, which splits Cambridge from Boston, lines the south side of campus. Many of the dorms face the river and have a great view of Boston. And Massachusetts Avenue, or Mass Ave, runs right though the middle of campus. The building shown above is on Mass Ave and the picture below is from the bridge over the Charles that Mass Ave runs on. I found it interesting that this is called the Harvard Bridge, since it is literally right next to MIT. But if you were to follow Mass Ave through MIT and deeper into Cambridge, it would only take about ten minutes to get into Harvard Square.
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| View of Boston over the Charles River from Cambridge at Harvard Bridge |
I tried a couple good places in the area, the first being the Miracle of Science Bar & Grill. Courtney, one of Beta Epsilon's advisors, and I went for dinner on my first night. It is right on Mass Ave only a couple blocks up from campus. It was definitely sciencey because the menu was posted on the wall in a periodic table. No joke, each square had the initials of the element and then listed a food item under it. They didn't even have a menu for the table and when we asked, the waitress seemed to think we were crazy for wanting to read it in front of us. In any case, the food was good and it was an interesting experience.
The other place I went was the Flour Bakery & Cafe. Alison had been when she visited MIT earlier in the semester so I decided to go try out the breakfast sandwich too. The cafe was really cool, and also right on Mass Ave close to campus. They had so many sandwiches and baked goods that looked great. The breakfast sandwich had a big chunk of scrambled egg with bacon, tomato, arugula and dejonaise (dijon mayonnaise), which was delicious! Definitely a must-try if you are ever in the area.
Now I'm looking forward to my couple days off for Yom Kippur, then I'll be headed to upstate New York for two weeks!
Massachusetts Avenue by Amanda Palmer & The Grand Theft Orchestra
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