Photos

Here's my bridge to the year 2013 - Happy new year, and best wishes ahead!

The Longfellow Bridge is one of eleven bridges over the Charles River (most of them quite small) connecting the city of Boston to its neighbor, the city of Cambridge, MA. While not generally known as twin cities, Boston and Cambridge operate in much the same fashion as such places. Both are quite large; Boston is of course the state of Massachusetts' largest city, with a population of over 600,000, but Cambridge ranks fifth, itself with a population of over 100,000. The two have interconnected transit, and local institutions and colleges (most notably Harvard University) span the river that divides them.

The Longfellow, named for poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, stretches from Boston's West End and Beacon Hill districts to Cambridge's Kendall Square, home of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It serves as well as the river crossing for the city's Red Line subway, seen here. I love riding the Red Line over the Longfellow, as it gives me my favorite view of the city of Boston, which I've already shared a couple of times here (this one of Back Bay, this one of Beacon Hill).

Though the hazy, midday light was not really cooperating here, you can see the beautiful late 19th century architecture of the bridge and the rusted tones of the steel beneath it as the train rumbles overhead.