December 16th 2013: Scavenger Hunt at the Museum of Science, Boston

Today, I had a company event to go scavenger hunting at the Museum of Science in Boston. Arriving a little early, I decided to grab some breakfast inside the Liberty Hotel at a place called Clink. The inside of the hotel, which I have not been inside of before, is actually pretty nice.

The restaurant itself was actually a bit of a downer compared to the rest of the hotel, though still decent.

After looking at the menu, I decided to get the Whole Wheat Pancakes (with lemon, ricotta, strawberries and vermont maple syrup). The presentation was pretty good,

but I was pleasantly surprised when I cut open the pancakes just to find fruit stuffed inside the pancake. Needless to say, my meal was pretty good.

From here, I headed to the Museum of Science. I was really early, so I walked around for a bit in the free section of the museum.

The bus carrying my colleagues here was late due to traffic and the snow, but thankfully they all arrived eventually. With that, our hosts from Watson Adventures came to meet us and split us into different teams. Mine ended up consisting of all girls except me. Hence, we ended up calling our team "Allan's Angels".

We were provided with a binder of information, questions and puzzles to solve.

We had to go all over the museum to find the solutions to our questions, and some of them were extremely hard to find. Ingenious questions at that. Thankfully, our teamwork paid off, and with some lucky guessing and spotting of the correct spots, we actually got all the answers correct. Some pictures I took while we were on the hunt, including the T-Rex with a scarf wrapped around its neck, follow.

My team ended up being tied for first position, and got asked tiebreaker questions about Cluedo. Thankfully, our 2nd answer was closer to the actual answer than the other team, so we ended up winning in the end. Our prize was a bag.

We were allowed to roam around the museum after our lunch at the cafeteria, and I decided to wait until the Lightning! show started, because I wasn't able to do so the last time I was here. The show was pretty cool, though more oriented towards kids. It was interesting to note that songs could actually be played using lightning at different frequencies. Here are pictures I took of the largest Van de Graaf generator in the world in action.

From here, I headed out of the museum and back to my car, somehow losing the bag I had won along the way. After finally reaching my car, I decided to spend the rest of my daylight hours checking out frozen water bodies in Lexington

Potter Pond

and Woburn

Mishawum Lake, 252 Mishawum Road

before finally heading to Medford for dinner at the Lantana Cafe, a pretty nice looking Italian restaurant.

I decided to get the Ornesto Chicken (Sauteed tender chicken breast with caramelized apples and walnuts in an orange brandy sauce and served with pumpkin raviolis) for my meal.

Unfortunately, the chicken breast was a little dry, and the sweet and sour sauce did not seem to go well with the food either. It was still edible enough for me to finish it all though. Thankfully, the Lemoncello-Mascarpone Cake (served with whipped cream and raspberry sauce) I ordered for dessert was actually pretty decent.

Overall, I will try to give this place the benefit of the doubt, given the other dishes were probably better. With that, I called it a day and headed home. I'm glad my team won the scavenger hunt today. It was a really well organized event.