Six, Wednesday August 20th, 2008

Wednesday was Maura's sixth birthday. We celebrated it with a family outing of Maura's choice. What she chose was a trip to the Boston Science Museum, a Boston Duck Tour and dinner out at Addis Red Sea, an Ethiopian restaurant in the South End at which we had eaten to celebrate my birthday. We had three generations of the family along. Maura's mom took the day off from work and my parents came for a visit from Indiana. They like to visit their only grandchild on her birthday.

The Science Museum is almost as much fun as the Children's Museum for Maura and it is a lot more fun for me. Most of the Science Museum exhibits are hands-on mini experiments that encourage curiosity and wonder. We spent several hours there and didn't see nearly everything. We had to leave in order to get dinner before Maura's bed time but I think she could have handled another hour at the museum without getting bored. I could have easily handled another hour. While there was a good crowd for a Wednesday the Science Museum is much larger than the Children's Museum and the average age of the visitors is a bit higher. The ambient noise and chaos are much more bearable.

One thing that Maura doesn't like at the Science Museum is the lightning show where they demonstrate static electricity using the giant Van de Graaff generator. Maura is a bit sensitive to loud noises and she remembered being frightened of them the last time we visited the museum.

We took two hours out of the middle of our museum visit to take a Boston Duck Tour. We rode the Haymarket Hannah piloted by Admiral Amnesia. He didn't forget much except for his pants. The tour was a lot of fun and as far as I could tell information was good. Since I used to be a tour guide in Boston I do know a bit about the city. When we left the streets of the Boston for the waters of the Charles River the kids on board got to take a turn driving the bus. Maura enjoyed her turn at the wheel.

Our final activity for the day was dinner at Addis Red Sea. We had been there once before and Maura wanted to share the restaurant with her grandparents. The restaurant is a lot of fun. It has lots of neat touches, including serving meals on Mesobs, traditional low basket tables. Ethiopian food is exotic and flavorful and eaten with the hands using thin spongy injera bread. We were able to sample a variety of dishes with five people at the table. There was one alarming incident at the end of the evening though. My dad paid for the meal with a credit card and the waitress dropped it on the way back to the table. The card was found but it could have been a problem.