Today we decided to go to Harvard as we hadn’t managed to make it last time we were here and as a Red brick University it only seemed right that we called in. We took the tube that looks more like a tram up to Park then changed onto what looked like a proper tube train for the journey north of the river to Cambridge which is where Harvard is. You can either just wonder round on your own or join a tour run by the students, we decided to just walk round which would give us the opportunity to both look at what we wanted to and also do it at our pace. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed into any of the college buildings but we could walk round the outside. I was actually a bit disappointed with the buildings as they are all just Red Brick buildings built in the early 1800s and could quite easily be an office block as the halls of residence, also they don’t seem to have the courtyard approach to colleges that we have at Oxford and Cambridge, all the same some of the architecture was nice and it is home to the largest private library system in the world. Harvard Library is actually 73 libraries with more than 18 million volumes, it is the oldest library in the US and the largest university library, although I am not sure if that is in the US or worldwide. We also quite liked the meeting hall that looks more like a church! We walked round the grounds and looked at the bronze statue of John Harvard founder of the university. After wondering round the university grounds we walked to the common and had a look round there, this was common land where people could graze their cattle on the way from the coast to New York but it was also used by the militia for training and was where Washington took command of the army to fight the british in the war of independence. After we finished walking round it was almost lunch time so we headed back to the centre of Boston for one final walk round the park and look at the Capitol building before heading off for a nice relaxed lunch before heading back to the hotel to pack and have a relax before heading out to the Airport and the flight back home.
