A Walk in the Cemetery

Who wouldn't want to celebrate their anniversary in a graveyard? Stephen and I took a walk around Mt. Auburn cemetery for ours this year. This was one of the items on my list of things to do after handing in my thesis. I had heard that it's picturesque and that many famous people are buried there (I've since learned that Buckminster Fuller is among them--I wish I'd sought out his headstone), but had never visited before.

It's amazing to me that this peaceful oasis exists in the midst of a (relatively) bustling city. The cemetery was so quiet and lush that it was startling to hear traffic whizzing by when we walked near the fence on Mt. Auburn Street.

We walked up Washington Tower and admired the view of Boston's skyline from the top, with the Charles River below. Boston is not a tall city; the John Hancock Tower, that blue one on the left, is the tallest building in all of New England, but just the 46th tallest in the US, and 162nd in the world. Yet it towers over the rest of the city, except for the Prudential Center, the grayish one on the right, which is about 40 feet shorter. I like the relative shortness of the city, though. It feels manageable to me, as someone with small-town roots. I wouldn't want to be surrounded by skyscrapers.

From the top of the tower, we spied what looked like a cathedral nearby, so we climbed down and went searching for it. It turned out to be a chapel near the entrance gate--somehow I'd missed it on the way in. The architecture was very grand for such a small building, like it was built at half of its intended size.

Since we were nearby, we stopped at Sofra for lunch. I had the bread hummus again, and managed to get a picture this time.

For dessert, I had a morning bun with orange blossom glaze, which was not at all what I was expecting it to be. I thought it would be muffin-like, but instead it was a syrupy clump of small pieces of sweet pastry, somewhat akin to monkey bread.

And delicious.