When we got back from the World Cup, we immediately bought tickets for Football at Fenway. We knew we would be experiencing a football withdrawal and thought this was just what the doctor ordered. We got to watch Celtic Football Club of the Scottish Premier League and Sporting Clube de Portugal from the Portuguese Liga in our own house (read: Fenway). It was AWESOME!
We went on a little weekend trip to do some data collection on campus wayfinding. We hit up Mount Holyoke, Skidmore College and Middlebury. We had a great time seeing some cute little college towns. Also, neither of us had been to Saratoga Springs before and we loved the atmosphere there. We saw some Shakespeare in the park and took some time to walk the main streets after documenting Skidmore. We got ourselves in a bit of a bind finding a place to stay because of the Beer Festival going on in VT, but it all worked out and we ended up in Montpelier for the night. We enjoyed good local brews, but no open breweries (darn festival) this trip.
Yum!
Closed 🙁
With the World Cup now over, we were at a bit of a loss. We had never really gotten in to the swing of baseball this season with the World Cup ramping up and now that our soccer was over, it was hard to get into it mid-season. We had a tickets to a few Sox games though, starting with the Rangers. We had standing room only tickets, which worked out in our favor as it was a drizzly day and we captured a table just behind home base before everyone realized they needed to head for cover. During the rain delay, we maintained control of our table and waited out the LONG delay. Once the game started up again, there were a ton of empty seats, so we used the opportunity to walk the park and try out the views from all seats. We enjoyed ourselves, but after all that watched a 4-8 loss (and saw the wrong team’s star hit a gram slam for the cycle).
All of our South Africa 2010 adventure posts have now been appropriately postdated – it has gotten tiring to write datelines for each post and as we continue to catch up to the present day – we’ll just post date the photos to the right day!
The 2010 World Cup Final between Spain and the Netherlands was just days after we returned to the States. We carefully considered our options for the best venue to watch the Final and decided on Boston’s FanFest at the House of Blues. Not only were our vuvuzelas allowed – they had some for sale there too!
We were really good at blowing our vuvuzelas. It was obvious that we had authentic training. We had a great time. With our South Africa gear, “real” vuvulzalas, and awesome vuvuzela skills we met a South African who thought we, too, were from South Africa. We enjoyed watching the game with a bunch of soccer fans and it helped to alleviate the sadness from the end of our vacation, but it did not compare to the awesome atmosphere of the games in South Africa. Additionally, we were concerned for the soccer withdrawal Josh was certain to go through. We picked up some tickets for Football at Fenway as soon as possible to help mitigate the future depression.
It was a good game, but it looked as though the Dutch were outmatched from the start.
Lansdowne Street was full of fun revelers when we left the FanFest (but no Long Street). As we walked home, we could hear vuvuzelas and followed the call over to the Christian Science Center Reflecting Pool! It was full of Spanish fans and revelers – literally full. They had jumped in the pool (some stripped to their knickers) and were singing Spanish football songs and doing fun dances. It was a lot of fun!
Monday, July 5
Johannesburg and Pretoria, RSA
After the museum, we headed over to the Sterkfontein Caves where the fossils of hominids were found. It is an active dig site. We thought it was pretty darn cool! After exploring the caves on a tour, we were pretty tuckered out. We figured we were done exploring and to call it a trip. Lance drove us back to the airport. We were really early, but this ended up being a good thing because we ended up having to stand in 4 lines (one line 2 times) before we could get in the right one to get checked in to our flight at the super crowded airport. After that was all sorted out, we were still plenty early (we had a midnight flight departure). We did some final airport shopping and found a nice airport restaurant with a great view for dinner and drinks. We watched some boys play soccer in the terminal and Jeannette even ran into one of her MIT students in an airport shop! Then it was time to head to Amsterdam for a super short layover, and before we knew it, we were home and back in our desks at work!
It got a little tight at times:
I think that is Sterkfontein:
The hole we ascended from:
The sky was doing amazing things our last day in Africa:
In the caves you could look up and see this holes and cracks – it was the only light inside in some parts:
This is where they found something important… and are still actively excavating:
It was a beautiful last day – it matched our melancholy moods:
We hope to return to Africa someday. It is beautiful.
