The Best Of Boston

Myself and Hayley went to the Harvard Natural History Museum on Sunday and while we didn't stay for long I founds two areas of note. They had a marvellous collection of mineral samples and while I've not previously mentioned my love of minerals I did spend much of Saturday night fondling a large bar of what might have been calcite at Elspeth's flat which may have piqued my curiosity on the following morning. There were some very dark, black samples which may have been manganite, galena and antimony samples which I can heartily recommend.

It could all have gone downhill from there but no, the very next room housed the amazing (yes, amazing) collection of glass flowers made by Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka. They made marine animals out of glass for the purposes of display and education back in the 19th Century. Someone saw one of their jellyfish or something and commissioned them to make a huge range of glass flowers. These cats knew their glass and they clearly didn't get out much, the collection is stunning.

Before the Natural History museum we went to the Peabody Museum. Not so much.

However, Peta met us later in the day and we went to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum which was probably one of the best museums I've been to for the following reasons, (a) small, (b) no explanatory plaques to reveal what I was looking at (c) it was closing an hour after we arrived (d) great garden.