Harvard-Brown is a yearly football game played by the Crimson and the Bears. It’s tradition to attend, and as part of my goal to have the most fun senior year possible, my friends and I decided to attend! 

The game was held in Providence, Rhode Island, which meant that my friends and I needed to commute around two hours to get to the game. We decided to take the commuter rail, which isn’t too far away from campus. We took the Red Line to South Station, then took the Commuter Rail from South Station to Pawtucket. A few hours before we embarked on our commute, we found out that Brown would be holding the game in a stadium off-campus, but didn’t consider how that would change our travel plans (bad idea!). Here’s a good travel tip: Check which station you should exit the train at before you get on the train! We couldn’t tell which station would be most convenient to stop at until halfway through our train ride, so we could have accidentally made our commute much longer than it needed to be.

After we got off the Commuter Rail, we waited for a bus that would take us from the train station to the stadium, which came quickly. We also had to download an app to pay our fares, which we will keep in mind the next time we visit Providence. The ride was only a few minutes long, and soon we were walking into the game! We got there in the middle of the first quarter but struggled to find good seats since it was windy and rainy. That was the part of our trip that we were the most prepared for, but it still took a while for the rain to settle down to a tolerable level. Once that happened, though, the game was very fun to watch!

My interest (and understanding) of football has been a very recent development, but this game only deepened that interest. Harvard played a great game, and we ultimately won! It was so much fun watching our band play during halftime, Harvard completing some really cool plays, and celebrating our team’s win. After the game let out, I convinced my friends to check out Brown’s campus before we left the city for the night, since I had never seen it before. We quickly Ubered to the main part of Brown’s campus, and took a very quick stroll through it. It’s very similar to our own Yard, and only made me miss our campus more. After some time, we walked to Brown’s main strip to grab dinner before heading back to campus.

My Harvard-Brown experience was new (I’d never attended the game before I became a senior), exciting, and a great bonding experience with my friends. It was also another awesome chance travel throughout the Northeast, which is very convenient through the commuter rail or quick road trips. I recommend every Harvard student give away games a chance, and make trips out of them!