Boston trip in iPhone photos

I'm just returning from a weekend trip to Boston for the Society for Psychophysiological Research annual conference (sounds terrifying, right?). I didn't bring my DSLR because I didn't want to worry about traveling with too many expensive items.

I did, however, bring my iPhone. And I did, of course, take entirely too many photos.

(I spent the majority of my time actually at the conference, but I'm sure you don't want to see all of those pictures. Thus, here are just the pictures from exploring the city.)

The other cohort in my lab (now Dr. Anderson) didn't show up until Wednesday night but I got into Boston that morning. This is what I looked like wandering around a city by myself. (Note the gross hair: I got caught in a rainstorm out of nowhere. Thanks, Boston.)

My poster presentation was the first group of posters, on Wednesday evening. Nothing like getting the work out of the way right at the beginning.

On Thursday, we listened to a symposium before going out to lunch and exploring the city.

It was quite colder than I had prepared for, but was a nice change from Texas's 90-degree days.

While walking downstairs, we saw this interesting tribute to Mark for his birthday.

Four exclamation points = really happy.

Nate presented his poster Thursday evening, and for some reason I didn't get a photograph of that. Rest assured that he looked professional while fielding questions from passerbys.

We went to dinner at the Legal Test Kitchen. Nate had an amazing lobster macaroni and cheese and I stuck with clam chowder and some wontons on the side.

After dinner, we went to a sports bar to wait out the rain (it had started pouring) and we stumbled in on a BoSox game. It was the first game against the Rays (the Rays won) but it was fun to watch a BoSox game in Boston in a huge group of Bostonians.

Friday morning, we woke up early because there was a symposium on methods regarding sex research. Keep in mind that this conference was about any research that uses physiological recordings. Because I've always been curious about methods for recording sexual organs, we decided to attend.

The last goal of that specific symposium was my favorite:

Most of the above symposium focused on research reading the brain during sexual acts, but was presented in a professional manner. They talked a lot about methodological questions that I never would have guessed would come up (e.g. in science, we try to have a "control" but how do you control in sex research?). It sounds weird, but it was oddly fascinating.

We then decided to walk more around the city and experience as much as possible.

We headed up to the north end of Boston and get a Mike's Pastry cannoli. And by "a," I mean three.

Fist pumps and leg kicks in Boston for Mike's Pastry cannolis and Em's blog!

We walked through an amazing-looking produce market. Look at all the colorful fruit and veggies!

We ate oysters at the Union Oyster House. Toted as the Oldest Remaining Restaurant in the US, we ate oysters at the original U-shaped bar that Daniel Webster used to eat at. Awesome.

On the way to dinner, we stumbled in on a wine tasting at a local liquor/wine store. Yes, please!

For dinner, Nate took me to a tiny restaurant called The Daily Catch. The last time he was in Boston, he had some amazing squid ink pasta with garlic and olive oil there, so of course, we had to get it again.

It looks kind of gross, but it was actually really yummy!

The restaurant was so tiny that they could only seat 18 people at a time, and even then, it's super cramped. Nate wasn't kidding when he said it was tiny.

We called it an early night on Friday, because Saturday we got to see the LaBouffs and the Blakeleys!

Rae and I are incredibly excited to see each other!

The men, trying to figure out how to get to Fenway (the look on Jordan's face here is priceless).

We stumbled upon a "Freedom Rally" in a park, which turned out to be a bunch of people smoking/selling pipes and carrying signs encouraging the legalization of marijuana. Random.

We made it to Fenway and walked around the stadium. Their third game in the series against Tampa Bay (and last home Saturday game) was that afternoon, so we saw some players in their fancy cars parking to go into the field. We saw a little boy bring his ball up to a player and have him sign it, so he must have been famous (but we aren't BoSox fans so we had no idea who he was).

We went to check out Harvard square and walked around the campus of the school. Group picture of some wonderful friends!

We met up with Hillary and Bryan (Hillary had just flown in from Chicago so we only got to spend the evening with the Blakeleys instead of the full day) at a pub before going to dinner at L'Osteria in the north end. Most restaurants in the north end don't take reservations on the weekends, but apparently this one did. Thus, when we tried to walk in and get a table, it ended up being an hour and a half wait. Sensing our frustration, the hostess ended up giving us a free carafe of wine.

It worked to ease our frustrations.

I have no idea how I didn't get a photo of the Blakeleys or all six of us, but it either had to do with the photo above, or because I saw this creepy faculty ID photo and was scared to the bone.

Hilarious, right?! :) Overall, it was a weekend full of presenting my research, hearing others' research, learning new things, and exploring the city with good friends. It was a blast.

How was your weekend?