April 10: We arrived in Boston in time for lunch with Elisabeth and unloaded piles of cooking things and kugels in her dorm in MIT and kitchen before checking into our hotel which was near Boston Commons (quite a distance away from MIT).We then returned to Cambridge, did some last-minute grocery shopping and set up the seder.
Elisabeth’s dorm has several kitchen/social areas with a lounge, nice cooking area and table that seats 10. With some nice paper and plastic settings along with some cut flowers, Chuck and I transformed this into quite a nice space.
Sadly, I forgot to take a picture of the set table or the guests but Jonathan’s fiancee Amy took a short video from which I abstracted the two pictures attached here. (The color is truer in the upper photo.)
Shortly after 7, my brother Donald and his wife Judy, son Jonathan with his fiancee Amy and Elisabeth’s friends Joey, Agnes and Charles all arrived and we began the seder. We did only the first half of the service and then launched into the meal, which included salad, baked salmon, BBQ chicken (thanks to the supermarket) and roast brisket (thanks to Sam’s Club) as well as matzah ball soup and the 3 kugels.
Donald and Judy brought some incredible macaroons (coconut, chocolate, almond and pistachio) and a chocolate torte from the wonderful Harbord Bakery in Toronto. It was a lot of fun and we came away stuffed!
We returned to the hotel with Jonathan and Amy rather late. In the morning we headed out to Au Bon Pain for breakfast, and then back to Cambridge to meet Elisabeth for lunch. We always make sure that we walk by Chuck’s undergraduate dorm.
And of course we walked by some of the iconic MIT buildings: 
We then all met for lunch. As seems to be our habit when visiting university towns, we also ran into a nonlocal friend – Mindy, from State College. (We knew that Mindy was also visiting Cambridge, but we were not expecting to see her.)
Jonathan and Amy had to return to NYC (having jobs does that), but after we dropped them at the train station we returned to the MIT campus. It was a spectacular day (in the 80s and sunny). MIT has sailboats that MIT students can borrow, and so we went sailing on the Charles River with Elisabeth. 
All of the sailing clubs were out in force – we dodged around the MIT, Northeastern and Harvard Clubs, as well as some rowing groups.
Elisabeth then went back to work to prepare for her rather hectic Wednesday schedule, and we met my friend Zhenzhen Yang and her husband Li for dinner in Cambridge.
They are both biologists/bioinformaticians and are returning to China after graduate studies and post docs in the US.
We had planned to meet for Shanghai food (as Shanghai will be their next destination). However, the restaurant was closed and we opted (with some prompting from me) for Eritrean instead. This proved to be a memorable but unhappy choice, as our waitress refused to accommodate our request for spoons.
(No-one but me was comfortable scooping up the food with the spongy bread). As well, the unfamiliar spices did not suit any of our palates. Oh well, as I always say – there are good experiences and memorable ones. The food was very photogenic however!
Part of the Boston plan was to visit my cousin Bob on Wednesday. He is a hard guy to reach, and we went to bed on Tuesday night with no communication from him. However, on Wednesday morning we finally got in touch and Chuck, Donald, Judy and I traipsed out to Newton to see Bob’s new house. He was quite scarred up from creating a seder for 145 people in a small oven (and getting many small burns in the process) but otherwise seemed to be doing well. We share grandparents and spent most of the visit filling in gaps in family history. The new house is enormous and has a gorgeous yard adjacent to a wetlands, with lots of birds. Unfortunately, Bob’s wife Karen was at work and we did not see her.
Elisabeth had her restaurants picked out, and we had dinner with her in Cambridge before moving into her dorm room for the night.
On Thursday we arranged to meet Chuck’s college buddy Allen and his wife Jenny for lunch. We had known for some time that Jenny and Allen are friends with Mindy and had met Jenny when she visited Mindy in State College a number of years ago. But somehow, Chuck and Allen had not got together. Meeting Mindy in Cambridge spurred Chuck to get in touch with Allen. So, a 40 year gap in the friendship was mended over lunch in Cambridge. Hopefully we will keep up the momentum and see them again soon.
Elisabeth took the afternoon off, and we explored North Boston, which includes Boston Public Market, Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market, as well as Paul Revere Square (pictured above with Mr. Revere appearing to gallop through Elisabeth’s hair).
Elisabeth was very eager to have dinner at Oleana’s, a mezze place in Cambridge that is very very popular. All of her attempts to get us a table had ended in failure, so we decided to show up when they first opened and try to get seated before the people reservations came in. We met up with Joey at 5:30, and all went according to plan. The dinner was great and we can certainly see why it is so popular.
Our plan was to zip out of Boston right after dinner, as the plan was to pick up Rumple on Thursday night. Unfortunately, the tire pressure indicator on the car started beeping right after we dropped off Elisabeth, and the tire that we had filled just a couple of days before was again flat. Careful inspection showed a nail in the sidewall and air could be heard gushing out. Chuck’s hypothesis is that we had picked up the nail quite some time ago (leading to the low tire pressure earlier) but in parallel parking we had driven it deeper into the tire and expanded the hole. In any case, it was clear that we could not drive on the tire, and getting a new one in Boston after 7 p.m. did not seem feasible.
It was then that we learned that many newer cars (ie. our Ford Focus) no longer carry spare tires, but instead have a repair kit that plugs the hole and reinflates the tire for a few miles – not however for 120 miles on the highway. (Actually, it turns out that these kits are really only good for holes in the main tread, as the gunk that fills the hole cannot be directed to the sidewall.)
In the morning Chuck had the bright idea of asking the dorm front desk if they had a bicycle pump. It turns out they have a battery-powered pump which did a fine job of refilling the tire enough so that Chuck could drive the half mile to the tire place. In the photo to the left, Chuck is pushing in the nail to plug the hole while inflating the tire. In the photo below the rather large brown head of the nail can be seen. 