Day 4 of our Va-cape-tion: Harvard Yard and Cambridge

On our second day in Boston, we drove up to Cambridge to take a tour of Harvard Yard, the oldest part of the Harvard University Campus. We used the same self-guided audio tour that we had used for the Freedom Trail Tour the day before. During this tour we walked around the campus learning about the history and legends of this historic Ivy League university.

Class of 1875 South Gate, one of 25 gates created at different times to provide an entryway into Harvard Yard and security for the students.

Harvard Hall, a classroom building and one of the oldest buildings on campus.

Marianne rubbing the foot of the statue of John Harvard, AKA “The Statue of Three Lies”, in the hope of absorbing all the knowledge of Harvard.

The Harvard Science Center, which is Harvard's main classroom and laboratory building for undergraduate science and mathematics.

Memorial Church where commencements are held every year for graduating students.

Memorial Hall, designed and built as a memorial to the 136 Harvard men who lost their lives fighting for the Union cause in the American Civil War.

Widener Library, named after Harvard College alumnus and book collector Harry Elkins Widener, who died in the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912. (We tried to go inside, but you have to have a student ID to get past the front doors.)

Straus Hall, a dormitory for Harvard freshmen.

After our tour we headed to a wonderful little diner near the MIT campus called Veggie Galaxy for lunch before heading back south to do a tour of a cranberry bog, which we will talk about in our next post!

If you’re interested in learning more about the walking tour we did on this day, click here.