Here’s a run-down of the events of New Year’s Eve.
Friday morning, Becky and I drove in to Boston and parked at the ***Otis House|http://www.historicnewengland.org/visit/homes/otis.htm*** (yay for free city parking!). Becky had to work that evening from 5 to 9, since the Otis House was doing free tours as a part of First Night. As a bonus, Becky got two free First Night pins!
Our first trip was over to the ***New England Aquarium|http://www.neaq.org/***, which was giving away admission to First Night button-wearers (normally $15.95). We explored the exhibit halls, and saw lots of cool sea life such as penguins, jellies (the ‘proper’ name for jellyfish), giant sea turtles, and ***leafy sea dragons|http://www.divegallery.com/Leafy_Sea_Dragon.htm***.
After the aquarium, we walked over to the ***Common|http://www.cityofboston.gov/freedomtrail/bostoncommon.asp*** to see some ice sculptures. They weren’t entirely complete yet, and some of them had started melting. In fact, the end of the ice dragon’s tail had fallen off! Nonetheless, they were pretty impressive. From the Common we walked to Copley Square and saw a few ice sculptures there, including one that said “CIRCUS”. You’ll hear more about that one later… ***Fire and Ice|http://www.fire-ice.com/*** was just a few blocks away, so we went there for their $7.95 lunch. Yum.
Our next destination was the ***Christian Science|http://www.tfccs.com/*** Mother Church. Christian Science is headquartered in Boston, and among other activities they were sponsoring for First Night was a free tour of the church. The inside of the church is quite impressive, with Byzantine-Renaissance architecture, and one of the world’s largest Aeolian-Skinner pipe organs.
At this point, Becky and I had to part ways, since she had to get over to the Otis House for work. I headed over to the ***Hynes Convention Center|http://www.mccahome.com/hynes/default.aspx***, where many of First Night’s family activities were taking place. I saw some spiffy trampoline acrobatics by ***The Skyriders|http://www.theskyriders.com/intro.htm*** and a display of juggling feats by Dan Foley and Joel Harris, the ***Airborne Comedians|http://www.airbornecomedians.com/***. At around the time these were finished, the “Grand Procession” was forming up just outside of the Hynes. I went outside to check it out. Though there were a lot of people involved, and there was a lot of noise and spirit, I didn’t get too much out of it. It was just too dark to see much of anything, and unless a float had its own illumination, you couldn’t really see what it was. So I walked up and down Boylston street for a while. At one point, I returned to Copley Square to see how the ice sculptures were doing. As I had mentioned earlier, one of the sculptures was a big top that said “CIRCUS” on top. Well, just as I was walking up to it, a big gust of wind picked up and blew over half of the sculpture! The half that was left standing said simply, “CUS”. Hah! Just a few minutes after it blew over, a news crew was on the scene, sure to have an amusing piece for the next day’s news.
Finally I decided to attend an Organ Recital at the Christian Science Mother church. Their organist wasn’t the most impressive talent I’ve ever heard, but the organ itself was quite a thing to behold. Some of the notes in the lowest registers caused my seat to rumble!
After the recital, I picked up some ***Krispy Kreme|http://www.krispykreme.com/*** donuts at the ***Prudential Center|http://www.prudentialcenter.com/*** and headed over to the Otis House to meet Becky when she got out of work. The day was a success for the Otis House, with over 300 visitors in total! We decided to go to a swing dance party at the ***Boston Park Plaza Castle|http://www.bostonparkplaza.com/default.asp?sID=banqu&pID=cast***. It was a good idea in theory, and it was fun to do a little bit of dancing, but the floor was very, very crowded, there was no live music (just canned recordings), and it was just getting late. So we called it a night at around 11. We headed home and the stroke of midnight found us in our car just as we were entering Beverly!
All in all a very full and fun day, and a good way to ring in the new year!
Photos of the day are available online ***here|http://gallery.prwdot.org/first_night_boston_2005***.
Update
Added captions to the photo gallery.
Update
News coverage in the ***Boston Globe|http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/01/01/first_night_draws_1_million*** and the ***Boston Herald|http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=61304***.
Update
Linked to the Airborne Comedians and Skyriders from within the blog entry.
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