Boston Public Library

A couple of days ago, I ventured out on my own to the Copley area of downtown Boston, home of the Boston Public Library! Heed infallible Wikipedia:

It was the first publicly supported municipal library in the United States, the first large library open to the public in the United States, and the first public library to allow people to borrow books and other materials and take them home to read and use.

The library was HUGE and STUNNING and COMPLETELY like something out of a movie. Here are some pictures:

Exterior

Interior door

Through a window onto a reading room, check the banker's lamps!

Lion of Knowledge!

After I was done with book-heaven, I wandered around Copley, where I saw the following sign, which was super crazy…I’m totally on the east coast now!

This way to NYC!

There were a lot of really cool, incredibly old buildings with stained glass and carved-wood facades that housed things like ATT, Dunkin’ Donuts and Anthropologie. It was a really paradoxical sort of neighborhood, and reminded me fondly of Europe, particularly Germany (specifically downtown/Marienplatz in München) for some reason. And then, among all the old, refurbished buildings, was the very modern, glass-and-concrete gargantuan Apple store:

Apple store

I know they’re big in many parts of the world, but this was 3 stories! The biggest I’ve ever seen!

I also wandered by an open-farmers market right on the corner of this busy city street, the herbs were sooo deliciously fragrant. There was also a Danish baker selling huge pastries and breads that smelled fresh out of the oven. It was a good thing I didn’t have any cash on hand, or I would have been in fresh-thyme-and-carb heaven!