4th of July

Ok, so I realize I’m a little late with this one, but this weekend was so busy! The 4th of July here in New England is always a little difficult. We get lots of thunderstorms in the summer which makes it very difficult to plan for anything out of doors… many things have what’s called a “rain date” which is the alternate day of an event in case of rain. Well, the 4th of July doesn’t get a rain date because there’s only one of those per year. It was very rainy the morning of the 4th and the whole week had been rainy too, so people weren’t really making plans until last minute. I ended up going with some friends down to Boston to watch the most amazing fireworks show ever from the bank of the Charles River. There are TONS of people who flock to see these… and frankly- they are worth it. To get a good spot to watch, you’ve got to get their early… like 10am-12 noon early. To pass the time while you wait, you read, play cards and walk around. It is fun… but after a while you start thinking “these fireworks better be good” because it’s a long wait. I got there at about 3:30 because I needed to go into the lab to work for a while, but my friends Nate and Caroline got there around noon to stake out our spot. The fireworks are at 10:30.







The Boston Symphony POPS concert that starts around 8pm. The concert was great… it always is. They also had Rascal Flatts as the special appearance and they sang ~ 5 songs. If you sit in the hatch shell, you get to watch the concert live. The problem with that is that the view of the fireworks is less than optimal if you sit there. So, for everyone else, they have speakers lined up along the river projecting the live performance from only a few meters away. Towards the end of the concert, there is a patriotic sing along. It's awesome... everyone sings and it really is fun. Then more concert and the finale is a 24 minute fireworks show that is incredible. It's synchronized to music (amazingly synchronized) and they go off in patterns... wow! All in all, it was a good day and the fireworks were totally worth it! They always are!