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Visiting Boston
GirlPants
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First time poster, long time lurker. I've seen people start threads like this before so I'm hoping for good results.
So I am going to Boston Tomorrow for a little vacation to visit my cousins and just get out of town for a few days. I plan on just kind of exploring the city and doing some bar hopping but I was hoping you guys could offer me a few suggestions. What kind of stuff is there to do in the city? Any good hang outs for young people? I'm 22 and really into music and art n stuff, so all that is cool. Any good ideas are welcome. Also, if anyone is down to do some bar hopping or feels like showing me around that would be awesome too. Thanks!
So I am going to Boston Tomorrow for a little vacation to visit my cousins and just get out of town for a few days. I plan on just kind of exploring the city and doing some bar hopping but I was hoping you guys could offer me a few suggestions. What kind of stuff is there to do in the city? Any good hang outs for young people? I'm 22 and really into music and art n stuff, so all that is cool. Any good ideas are welcome. Also, if anyone is down to do some bar hopping or feels like showing me around that would be awesome too. Thanks!
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The Italian places on boston's North Side are pretty legendary.
If you feel like exploring a good place to start is the freedom trail . It's a red painted line that takes you through the awesome historical parts of the city including Paul Revere's House, Old North Church (you know, "one if by land and two if by sea"), The historic statehouse, and some really cool and creepy old cemetaries.
Duck Tours are fun. Definitely touristy but cute, too, and you get to see a lot of the city.
Faneuil Hall is pretty cool. IIRC, that's where Quincy Market is.
For a great lo-cost way to see everyhting, try walking the Freedom Trail. It's a red/brick stripe that runs on the sidewalk all over town and if you follow the line it takes you past most of the great sites. Often you don't notice it unless you look down and voila there's a stripe of bricks or red paint. The city is very compact so it's surprisingly easy to walk the whole thing.
If you have time to get out of town a little, some great places are Lexington to the west (where the Revolution began) and Concord to the north (where practically every great American author is buried).
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Or the museum of science.
Second recommendation for the freedom trail and duck tours as well.
Boston is a great city. Really pretty, lots of stuff to do.
Oh, and Barking Crab for a big basket of crab and a beer. Or two.
cheers (bull & finch) isn't that bad. don't expect it to look like the TV show set though. Supposedly down in the financial district is another cheers replicated to look exactly like the tv set, never went there though.
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http://www.mikespastry.com/
also for drinking if you want an artsy people type bar, try The Underground on Commonwealth ave. Right down the street from Fenway park and near the other coffee shop I listed.
I lived in boston for a couple of years so I really could just go rambling on....have to say avoid the science museum....just personal preference. And that Jamaica plain suggestion above; do not go wandering around there at night aimlessly. Used to live around that area. Saw knife fights, friends held at gunpoint, someone I know got pistol whipped. Once you start getting past the Museum of Fine Arts and the Northeastern/Wentworth campuses things get a bit ghetto and sketchy, if that is your thing fine then go for it, but if you don't want hassles go somewhere else.
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real cheers(bull & finch) is not in quincy market, it is off one of the edges of the park, what the hell is the name, boston commons.....
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Ah, ok. Well fake cheers in Quincy has a map to real cheers on their table mats. Fake cheers is really just 'generic sports bar with cheers branded merchandise' though.
This is crazy talk. They have a butterfly greenhouse. Plus lots of science. And an electricity show.
is that greenhouse still up? they changed their front advertisements when i drove by there a few days ago. something about baseball :P
anyways, i'd actually recommend the aquarium, esp cause they have shaaarks now. also, you can visit Fenway Park just to check out the area (if you're into baseball, history, sports history, whatevs) and Copley Square, which has a lot of shops, nice architecture, and great people watching.
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Be careful, though, the T shuts down earlier than it should.
No no no, Mike's is such a tourist trap. Modern Pastry is the place to go. It's a little drab on the inside, but they are all business.
been to mike's one too many times myself.......tourist trap or not I love those cannoli
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This reminds me do Dim Sum at China Pearl in China town, and if you want good dessert hit finale's either in harvard Square or the theater district.
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The Cheers you're referring to is Bull & Finch in Beacon Hill. http://www.cheersboston.com/bh_map.htm Beacon Hill is home to many famous residents, notably Senators John Kerry and Edward M. Kennedy. I would skip the Cheers in Quincy Market.
Whatever you end up doing, know that Boston is a great walking city (esp. Back Bay, the North and South Ends, Cambridge, pretty much anywhere around the Charles). Most of the other suggestions posted are good ones.
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- Cheers (Quincy Market or Original, both are waaay overpriced and have crappy food)
- Dicks (once again, mediocre food, overpriced and not that entertaining)
{Now that I think of it, Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market kind of suck. Don't spend too much time there as it is essentially a strip mall with cobblestones. Seriously, all the stores are big chains you can see anywhere and the food is crap and expensive}
- Mike's or Modern. Go one block over to the corner of Salem and Prince and hit Bovas. They have great canolis and .2% of the tourists.
- MoS: Seriously it sucks and is in no way worth the money.
- The pizza at Regina's sucks, do not get pulled into $3 slices.
- Visit Harvard.
- See the Aquarium. It's expensive and small as shit. It's not worth $20 to see a penguin for 10 minutes then get bored.
Things worth doing:
- The Sam Adams Brewery tour. Not as touristy as you would think and you get free beer.
- Do the Skywalk. It's cheap and actually a good view of the city.
- Pub wise, the Black Rose on State Street next to Quincy Market is good fun (possibly the only bar in that area worth going to). Or head out to Brighton and hit my favourite place, Sunset Bar and Grill almost on the corner of Brighton and Harvard Aves.
- If its a weekend see if there's a festival going on in the North End. I'm almost positive there's one every weekend in August.
- The MFA is awesome and totally worth seeing if you have the time. Don't fret if you miss it though.
- The Harborwalk is always overlooked but on a nice day it's a lovely walk (and brings you near the Barking Crab. I second the earlier poster, this place is great. I had my graduation dinner there.)
- Swan Boats: Cheesy but cheap and adorable fun. Plus you have to see the Common and Garden anyway.
- Old Town Trolley can be a good way to see the city as well as a good way to get around the city as it's hop on/ hop off.
I'm always up for showing people around town so if you want some drinking company pm me and I'll get Tank to come along.
PS: I work for Duck Tours. If you want to do one, make sure you buy tix early as they'll sell out by noon at latest on a Friday.
When I was a sophomore my best friend lived in the North End off Salem so we would meet at the Black Rose for drinks. I used to love that no matter what time you left the bar you could get a cannoli on the walk back. Sadly it isn't quite as convenient to visit from Brighton.
Actually I'm new to Boston too, I'll be attending BC this fall, so this thread helps me too.
tickets for Sox games are riggodamndiculously expensive now
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even though it was a few years ago I was able to purchase very cheap tickets through my school, $10 or around there, sure they were in the same seats that you could walk up game day and get for $12, but even still there are options around if you look. Go to Fenway at least once. I'd suggest shelling out a little extra and going when the Yankees come to town as the game is always mmmmmmmmm I'd guess I'd say "interesting" when the evil empire comes for a visit.
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Basball? Noooooo! I don't know if it's still there to be honest. I went last September. Even better than the Aquarium is going whale watching. The Aquarium run their own whale watching tour. We went and did it assuming that at best we'd see the odd jet of water on the distant horizon but whales are not shy. At one point we must've been surrounded by about a dozen of them, and they get so close that occasionally they were hitting the hull of the boat.
If want to want camp out for a week maybe. Now you're looking at a minimum of $40 and from stubhub for the 'bleacher seats' (I hate Fenway Park, it's too old, small, and cramped) when a crappy team comes to town. The one game I've seen there was when Tank's dad gave us tickets a client of his gave him so we were in the first row of the State Street box section behind the first base line. Those were great seats but had they not been free there's no way we would have had them.
As of now, it's cheaper (and more fun) to get the same seats at a Yankees game as I'd get here and spend a fraction of the money on the seats, then take the bus down and see a museum or two plus food and ice cream at the stadium. My roomie and I did this in like June and we spent less than $125 on the day. If we had gone to a Sox game the same seats would have cost us over $125 alone. I
Right now the MoS has the Baseball exhibit still. I don't know if it's good enough to make the museum worth visiting though. It's a place I've only gone when me and Tank can get in for free. I'd never pay to get in. The lightning show, while cool, isn't worth $17.
And how cold does it actually get (in the dead of winter)? Are full down jackets necessary?
You will need to be prepared for the occasional day in the teens, with the wind-chill being somewhere between -10 to -20 F. Average in the winter is probably somewhere in the high 20s to low 30s. So, you definitely need some sort of parka, and a hat and good gloves or mittens.
On most days I got by with an J. Crew coat with a quilted liner, a knit hat, and gloves. There were a couple days a few years ago where I was wearing thermal underwear under my pants on my way to work, and wearing a ski jacket, but that was really out of the norm.
Boston is very walkable if you have the patience to figure it out. The only reason it seems so much bigger is because the streets are all one way to it takes twice as long to get somewhere by car than it should.
I'm also going to breakfast tommorow with my cousins, then over to cheers and possibly harvard square. I will hopefully go to a free show by They Might Be Giants. But at the least im going over to northeastern or this strip down by fenway whcih is apparently the strip for all the bars and clubs. they name slips my mind.
Oh and does anyone know of any good climbing gyms in Boston, I know of one, but it's in Medford by Tufts, and I believe its a ways from BC (although I'm not really sure).