I took it a little easier today with only a couple of must-do’s on my list. I began with a visit to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the Brookline neighbourhood of Boston.

This eclectic collection has an interesting history. Isabella had started collecting rare books when she took an art history class at Harvard and met Bernard Berenson, at the time an art student. In 1891, Isabella inherited $2.78 million ($78 million in today’s currency) from her father. She and Bernard began to collect art seriously.

Isabella and her husband, Jack, dreamed of creating an art museum, a home for their collection. Jack died before the plan could take shape so Isabella carried on, on her own. She built the “palace” which opened with her collection in 1903. In her will, she directed that the collection be for the public good. Today, it is much as it was in her day.

Here are six photos from the Museum which show how eclectic her collection was. The “palace’ – the original building – was built around a courtyard, access to which is restricted. The photo above is the delicious bruschetta I lunched on at the Museum.

This afternoon I treated myself to Vew Boston, the viewing deck on the 52nd floor of the Prudential Building. I took these photos through a plexiglass divider so please forgive the occasional unavoidable reflection.

This was my final day in Boston. Tomorrow I drive to Vermont to start the photography workshop. Here are a few thoughts about Boston and some miscellaneous photos.

Traffic – watch out! It’s noisy. A lot of honking, at least relative to Vancouver traffic. And don’t take the start of the WALK sign to mean cross the street. Cars run red lights and often three cars would race through after the walk sign came on.

Public transit – excellent! I mentioned in a previous post that I found it easy to use. The stations and the cars are clean and the signage is good, and it’s easy to tap in with a credit card meaning you don’t have to preload a transit card.

Cost – Boston is not cheap! I found all forms of food – dinners, snacks, soft drinks etc. – pretty expensive. But as my friend Carol from yesterday’s Harvard visit noted, all the inputs to that food have become more expensive. True that.

Please don’t let the traffic and the cost keep you away. Boston is a great and very interesting city to visit. I felt safe (other than the traffic) walking on my own day and evening.

Boston is an old city and there are lots of old interesting looking buildings among the modern.

See you next time from Vermont!