Frodo's Adventures in Boston: Version 2.0!

Yeah, it's that time again. Time for......

ANOTHER ONE OF FRODO'S BIG LONG TRIP DOCUMENTARY THINGIES!!! OMGLOL!!!1!!!1one

This time, I'm in Boston. Again. I went last year in October as well, known to everyone as the meeting of andi...

This time the main subject is the L0rd of teh RiNg0r5 exhbit at the Museum of Science. With that I'll start my rambling
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Day One: October 2nd, 2004, somewhere around 3:00 pm:

I packed up and we drove to the airport in Philadelphia, PA. I slept pretty much all the way.

Got there, checked in, blaahblahblah....got on the plane for our departure of 5:42 pm. Again was served tiny, tasteless pretzels. Horid things. I looked at magazines on the way.

We got to Boston a little after 7:00.
We took a shuttle to a rental car place, and picked up our rental car. It was a huge Dodge Durango SUV thing that sits 7 people....hadn't expected that!

So we got the car and drove around bit, and got to Cambridge, which is across the Charles River on the opposite side of Boston. Drove around some more, pretending not to be lost.....eventually found our hotel, the Royal Sonesta. (www.royalsonesta.com/boston) Real nice place. Playstation in rooms......$7 for two hours >_< Warp-speed internet....$0.25 a minute....

We got settled in and ate at a resturant in the hotel, Davios. (www.davios.com) Nice italian food. I had this awsome dessert that was like a chocolate cake with chocolate pudding in the middle. It was extremly good. I'm serious *_*.....................

My Mom and I stayed up late and watched David Lettermen....which seems like I only watch in hotels...meh. Funny guy =p

Day 2:

The next day, we got up early, ate some breakfast in the hotel, and walked to the Museum of Science, which was 5 minutes away and could be seen from our hotel. Large advertisments for the LOTR exibit were pasted on the building, including a picture of The One Ring on a tower on the top of the building.

[LOTR exhibit]
We entered a hall through two replicas of those stone guy things that are on the river in The Fellowship of the Ring (forget their names...) I passed by a large shop and a food court, then walked up a flight of stairs that make sounds when stepped on.... Entered the entry room which later played Gollum's Song softly in the backround... Entered the doors to only be faced by a huge replica of the Cave Troll in FOTR. Everywhere there were the real costumes and swords and stuff, all accompanied by short movies about the characters who wore them. (At this point I accidentily hit the back button on my mouse, but everything is ok.) Anyway, yes. Lots of costumes, swords, yaddayaddayadda. You could see The One Ring. It was in a dark room, suspened in a glass cylinder. Quotes from the movies about the ring played randomly, and circles of elven script circled the room. Also, a ring of fire circled the wall. Very well done. The actual ring is really small.

I got to do interactive things too. I didn't get to hold anything though. They had some chain mail out at one point to play with, but I didn't look into that.

Some interactive things I did were a thing where you got into a carrige like the one in FOTR and they took pictures of you to make you look smaller like Frodo or bigger like Gandalf. We bought a picture of this for $5. I'll show that, along with other pictures, soon.
I also got to do the thing I wanted to do where you weiled a foam sword and sheild (actually it was wooden I think), and swing it about. Each person go to do this for 45 seconds. It was a little choppy. Not really very fluid or smooth, but I think I was the best one at it. No souvonier pictures from it though

We kept on looking. There were all the armour things and a big thing on how they made the chain mail for the armour. There was also a thing called a scaling wall where you could see what Middle Earth character you were as tall as. It said to me that I was either a tall hobbit or a very young dwarf. Of course we messed with the thing to get different responses
[/LOTR exhbit]

That was about it. We looked around a LOTR shop a bit, but I didn't buy anything, mainly because it was too expensive. After shopping there we looked at the rest of the muesum, which included things like Tamarins, the Human Body, Earth: Inside Out (mainly rocks), and other stuff.

After looking at the rest of the museum we ate lunch there, then shopped in the big museum shop, where I spent all of my money ($17) on a robot that climbs up walls and some little wiggly thing that I thought magiclly moved, but it's all controlled by a string -_-

After the museum we went back to our room and rested, then we shopped more and went to Harvard Square and surrounding area and........shopped some more! Yay! For some reason all of the people there reminded me of types of people on here....I wonder why

For dinner we ate at a place called "The Elephant Walk." I wanted to eat there because I saw it on TV. It was really cold in there >_< Food was good though. By the time we were done eating I was spent, so we went back to our hotel and I watched TV a bit before going to sleep.

Day 3:

The next day we got up and pakced up, and drove to Gordon College to pick up friends there (my Mom and Dad went there) we went to church with those friends, then ate Lunch at a place called Tom Shea's, where my Mom and Dad ate just after they were engaged. *sarcastic sniffle* We went back to the college after lunch and toured around. I got to see two college dorm rooms. Boy are they nasty And those were the girls rooms!

After all this we went to a park and I played... then we drove back to the car rental place, dropped off the car, and took the shuttle to the airport. Checked in, got on the plane. We had pretzels again...*sigh*.....I looked at my Disney World (November 5th, 2004) book, and planned our next vacation to Disney. We got home around 8:45pm, then drove home. It was a great trip

That's all! Enjoy

EDIT: You've got pictures!

The front of the LOTR map.

The back of the LOTR map.

The map of the rest of the museum.

The thing with the carriage, which they call a "Scaling Interactive" o-o Joy.

The little robot thing I bought.

The stupid little "Magic" Wigglee.
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For more details about what I ate, highlight below:

Spoiler (Highlight to read):

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Day 1:
On the plane, pretzels
For Dinner at Davios, Chicken Fingers and samplings of a ravioli stuffed with cheese and leeks, along with a barbeque-esque veal scallopene. Also that chocolate dessert.

Day 2:
Breakfast, a big fat honking blueberry muffin.
Lunch: A soft pretzel and mini oreo cookies.
Snack: "Munchie," a British candy bar that consists of chocolate, caramel, and a "crisp biscuit centre!"
Dinner: A chicken-lime-lemongrass-basil soup at The Elephant walk, also a chicken with rice dish.

Day 3:
Breakfast, none
Lunch, a baked, breaded filet of schrod.
Dinner, Ritz Bitz cheese sandwiches <_<

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theres so much more here than just that. you should have stayed longer

jeebus man, how many vacations do you go on?

Big Bro Davidios?? Sweet!! hehe.

Oh, come on...I KNOW you guys mentioned it <_<

hehehe. Italian food? Why, certainly ;0)

Gah...roommate is bugging me to go get some food >_> hehe, not that I'm not hunghie, myself ()_();

*gone eatin*

Gah! I need to get to that exhibit!
One of my friends went, and she said she got to hold Glamdring (Gandalf's sword).
I'm pretty sure that I'll go there by the end of this weekend (and I mean it this time).
Thanks for the details Frodo.

I got the hold Glamdring while I was there. The whole thing was awesome.

I had something wortwhile to add, but I lost it in the vast expanses of my mind.

I finally got to the exhibit, and it was awesome. Here are more details for those interested.

As we walked through the Museum of Science entrance corridor we could see an outer wall of the building that featured an enourmous rendition of the Fellowship poster, but in another room we looked at the back of that wall and it was made up of transparent glass windows. The poster image was only visible from the outside, which was cool.

We then passed through the hallway with the Argonath statues' models' replicas, ran up the musical stairs and entered the exhibit area fairly early so that we could beat the crowds.

Hanging from the ceiling of the room were many flags and banners of the Middle-Earth countries, and there were stands everywhere that held the armor, costumes and associated props of various characters and races, and a TV was next to each showing featurettes and clips from the LotR behind-the-scenes documentaries (I believe several clips were from the RotK Extended Edition documentaries). One of the featurettes ended with Éowyn's battle with the Witch-King, and every time that played the onlookers would cheer as Éowyn declares, "I am no man" and stabs the wraith.

One of the booths displayed Frodo's costume, next to which were Frodo's mithril vest, the phial of Galadriel, Thorin's map from The Hobbit (the one Gandalf looks at in FotR), Sting, and the Red Book (all were behind a plexiglass wall). Other booths held Saruman's Palántir and book, opened to the page with the Balrog illustration, the Minas Tirith records Gandalf looked through (they were readable), Théoden's incredible armor and sword, Gil-galad's spear and shield from the prologue, Boromir's funeral boat with Boromir's (fake) corpse inside, the shards of Narsil and the reforged Andúril, the Ring of Barahir (the two serpents were hard to distinguish), the Three Elvish Rings of Power, helmets and suits of armor belonging to Sauron, Uruk hai, common orcs, Moria orcs, Elves of the Last Alliance, Haldir's soldier's (Helm's Deep Elves)Gondorian soldiers, the Rohirrim and the Haradrim, and much more. Concept art for the movies was displayed on the walls.

The Nine Rings of Power were there as well, and they were very interesting. When the kings received them in the movie's prologue, you can see the rings for about one second. Each had an amber gemstone and a person's face on each side of the gem. When the kings became wraiths, eight of the rings mutated into designs that featured the red Eye with skulls on either side where the faces used to be.

The scale models of Orthanc (Saruman's tower), Barad-dûr (Sauron's tower) and the Hobbitton mills were also displayed. The Barad-dûr model, at 1/500th scale, had been used in several wide shots in the movie, and I'm pretty confident the Orthanc model was the one used in wide shots. Very cool.

At the scaling wall Frodo mentioned, I was told that I would be a wizard based on my height. I got a 3D scan taken of my face and one of those scale picture's with the wagon. I also got to (wearing gloves) hold some chain mail, and hold an exact replica of Glamdring, which weighed about five pounds. The actual Glamdring Gandalf wielded in the movies was a few feet away, behind another plexiglass wall.

In the gift shop, which had a TV playing The Return of the King, I bought a book about the weapons and warfare of The Lord of the Rings, which I probably should have gotten before the exhibit since it has great photos and information about a lot of the stuff I had just seen. Of course, I am going to try to get my parents to let me go back again next week, when Sean Astin is scheduled to visit the exhibition.

Okay, I'm done.

[/quote]Geez I wish i had gone...

Sean Astin visited the Museum of Science today to do a booksigning for his book There and Back Again: An Actor's Tale, and I got to see him!

This morning I took the PSATs (ugh, paying to come to school at 7:30 on a Saturday to take an optional test), which finished before noon, and I went with one of my friends back to the Museum of Science. We arrived at about 1:40, when Sean Astin was taking an hour break, and the place was mobbed. The line for the exhibit (which was sold out) went from the musical staircase in the Atrium, down a long hallway, through the lobby, outside, and down the side of the building. We were just there for to the booksigning (which was also in the Atrium), but we found out that the line to Sean Astin's desk had been closed off long before noon because so many people were there. The hundreds of people who were unable to get into the line hang around the room nonetheless. People were everywhere on the ground floor, but there were also many many people on the balconies in the children's playarea and on the third floor.
We wandered about outside the line and found a spot to stand that was about 10 feet away from the desk Sean would be seated at. Security had no problem with this until about 5 minutes before he returned, so we were forced back into the crowded area. I was able to see Sean when he came in and stood on his chair to wave to everyone, but then he sat down and the crowd prevented us from seeing him from our angle. We milled about until we came to the other side of the desk, but a security guy told us we blocked the fire lane when we stood there. Anyone who wasn't against a wall was scolded for being a firehazard (we got lectured about 50 times).
We went up to the third floor which had a great view of everything. People lined almost every inch of the railing overlooking the room. We stood there for ages in a stupor. It seemed that everyone on the balcony was completely unable to believe that they were spending hours in the same room as Sean Astin and yet they were unable to meet him. Every now and then people would call out to Sean and he'd often wave (a group of girls kept shouting "We love you Sean!! Marry us!!").
At one point Sean got a call from his daughter Alexandra, and he held his phone out so she could hear the crowd's cheers.
Eventually we returned to the first floor and got into a conversation with a wicked nice group of people in the line. Since each person in line was allowed to get two items signed, they offered to take our books with them. I wasn't able to witness my book getting signed because I was again told that I was being a fire hazard when I tried to get closer, but I got my book back with Sean's signature and thanked those people for being so awesome to us.
The booksigning ended shortly afterwards (at 5:00) and Sean stood up to give a brief speech over the megaphone. He thanked thanked the museum and everyone for coming and being so great, declared in good humor that he was exhausted, and cheered for the Boston Red Sox. I, like countless others, had positioned myself on the edge of his exit path and, after a security guy ploughed through telling everyone to get back, Sean walked by shaking hands with as many people as he could (including me!!). Everyone around was ecstatic; the 4+ hours of lingering had paid off!
The whole experience was great; I had talked with a lot of friendly people while I was waiting. I did notice that security no longer seemed to care about people completely blocking fire lanes once Sean had left.


The LotR exhibit will still be open for one more week.