Boston Massachusetts Tourism Guide to Hotels and Travel Deals.

Boston Massachusetts Tourism Guide to Hotels and Travel Deals. Includes Guide to Boston Hotels, Lodging, Destinations and Helpful Travel Tips.

Although the metropolitan area of BOSTON MASSACHUSETTS has long since extended to fill the shoreline of Massachusetts Bay, and stretches for miles inland as well, the seventeenth century port at its heart is still evident. Forget the neat grids of modern urban America: the twisting streets clustered around Boston Common are a reminder of how America began, and the city is enjoyably human in degree.

Boston Massachusetts was until 1755, the biggest city in America: as the one most directly affected by the latest whims of the British Crown, it was the natural birthplace for the opposition that culminated in the Revolutionary War. Numerous evocative sites from that era are preserved along the Freedom Trail through downtown. Since then, however, Boston has in effect turned its back on the sea. As the third busiest port in the British Empire after London and Bristol, it stood on a narrow peninsula. What is now Washington Street provided the only access by land, and when the British set off to Lexington in 1775 they embarked in ships from the Common itself. During the nineteenth century, the Charles River marshlands were filled in to create the posh Back Bay residential area. Central Boston is now slightly set back from the water, separated by the unsightly John Fitzgerald Expressway that carries I - 93 across downtown. Boston Massachusetts has been working on routing the traffic underground and disposing of this eyesore, a massive project a decade in the making known as the Big Dig, though the epic task will not likely be completed before 2004, much to the frustration of locals.

There is a certain truth in the charge leveled by other Americans that Boston likes to live in the past: echoes of the Brahmins of a century ago can be heard in the upper class drawl of the high class districts. But this is by no means just a city of White Anglo Saxon People: the Irish who began to arrive in large numbers after the Great Famine had produced their first mayor as early as 1885, and the president of the whole country within a hundred years. The liberal tradition that spawned the Kennedys remains alive, fed in part by the presence in the city of more than one hundred universities and colleges, the most famous of which Harvard University actually stands in the city of Cambridge, just across the Charles River, and is fully integrated into the tourist experience thanks to the excellent subway system in the area.

The slump of the Depression seemed to linger in Boston for years - even in the 1950s, the population was actually dwindling - but these days the place definitely has a rejuvenated feel to it. Quincy Market has served as a blueprint for urban development worldwide, and with its busy street life, imaginative museums and galleries, fine architecture and palpable history, Boston is the one destination in New England there is no excuse for missing.

The City - Boston Massachusetts

Boston has grown up around Boston Common, which was set aside as public land in 1634. The obvious first stop on any tour of the city, it is also one of the gems in the string of nine parks (six of which were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, America's foremost landscape architect) known as Boston's Emerald Necklace . Another gem is the lovely Public Garden , across Charles Street, where the two ton swan boats $1.50, which paddle across the main pond, are a less-than-natural, though whimsical, focal point.

The visitor center, the start of the Freedom Trail, is near the tapering north end of the Common. As you stand here, facing up Tremont Street with the State House away to your left, the main shopping district, Quincy Market, and the waterfront are slightly ahead and down to the right. The modern concrete wasteland of Government Center is straight up Tremont Street, with the North End beyond, first Irish, then Jewish, and now very definitely Italian. A short way behind you on the left rises Beacon Hill, every bit as elegant as when Henry James called Mount Vernon Street the most prestigious address in America and far removed from its 18th century nickname of Mount Whoredom. Heading away from the center down Tremont Street brings you to Chinatown and the Theater District , while grand boulevards such as Commonwealth Avenue lead west from the Public Garden into the Back Bay, where Harvard Bridge runs across the Charles River into Cambridge.

Best of Boston Tourism

Quincy Market
Grab some take-out scrod and hang with tourists and townies in Quincy Market, a bustling complex of oddball stores, fast-food restaurants and bars.

Harvard University Tour
The guides can be annoyingly cheerful, but it's worth taking a tour of this impressive if over-hyped bastion of Ivy-League education - if just for the oft-told tale about how the iconic John Harvard statue isn't really a likeness of John Harvard at all.

Durgin Park
Durgin Park has been serving traditional Yankee fare such as pot roast and roast beef since 1827, and despite the grumpy waiters, locals still have rowdy fun at the restaurant's long, communal tables.

Fenway Park
Watch a game in Fenway Park, the nation's most storied and quirkiest baseball stadium and home to the legendary Green Monster, Fenway's towering, 37-foot left-field wall.

Old North Church
It's disputed whether church sexton Robert Newman hung lanterns in Old North Church's steeple, warning Minutemen of British movements in the Revolutionary War, but the church is still worth a look for its eight old bells (the first cast in the New World) and ancient clock.

Harvard Square
Harvard Square gets particularly lively on weekend nights, as a sometimes volatile mix of teen punks, religious zealots, musicians and students converge on the university's social center.
Exploring Boston Massachusetts

Boston Back Bay Tourism

From 1857 onwards, the spacious boulevards and grand houses of Back Bay were built as each portion of the tidal flats of the Charles River was filled in. Thus a walk through the area from east to west provides an object lesson in Victorian architecture. One of the most architecturally significant - if not the prettiest - of its buildings is the Romanesque Trinity Church ($3) on Clarendon Street, supported on four thousand wooden pilings that have to be kept permanently moist. Towering over the church is Boston's signature skyscraper, the John Hancock Tower , an elegant wedge designed by I.M. Pei, and whose rooftop observatory affords a glorious panorama of Boston. (At the time of publication the observatory was closed indefinitely due to security concerns; call 617/572-6429 for the latest details.) Construction defects caused the Hancock Tower to shed three thousand panes of glass during its first year; the cost of insuring a neighboring hotel against damage was so prohibitive that it was cheaper for the developers to buy it outright. Copley Square nearby is an upmarket shopping mall with several good snack bars and restaurants.

The Christian Science Center at Huntington and Massachusetts avenues is the "Mother Church" of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, and the home of the Christian Science Monitor newspaper; Nelson Mandela made a point of paying a personal visit in 1990 to thank the paper for its support of his release from prison. The complex houses the Mapparium (Mon-Sat 10am-4pm; free), an impressive glass globe of the world, through which you can walk on a footbridge. Part of its interest is that it was built in 1932, and thus shows national boundaries as they were then.

Further south, beyond the boundaries of Back Bay and a long enough walk to warrant taking the Green subway line instead (take the train marked "E"), is the Museum of Fine Arts at 465 Huntington Ave (Mon & Tues 10am-4.45pm, Wed-Fri 10am-9.45pm, Sat & Sun 10am-5.45pm; $14, which includes a free repeat visit within 30 days, under-17s free, ). From its magnificent collections of Asian and ancient Egyptian art onwards, this holds sufficient marvels to detain you all day. High points include Edward Hopper's tranquil, hopeful Room in Brooklyn (American Modern room); Andrew Wyeth's Corner of the Woods (William Coolidge room); Degas' The Little Dancer ; Gauguin's Where do we come from, What are we, Where are we going ? (Impressionists room); and Millet's The Sower (English and French room). Don't miss the American Decorative Arts , either: a gloriously nostalgic jamboree of coffee urns, speak-your-weight machines and reconstructed living rooms. The I.M. Pei-designed West Wing holds special exhibits and the contemporary art collection.

A smaller-scale and rather more idiosyncratic collection of fine arts can be found at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum , down the road at 280 The Fenway (Tues-Sun 11am-5pm; $10, weekends $11). Styled after a fifteenth-century Venetian villa, the Gardner has a stunning central courtyard, and is crammed with a hodgepodge of works collected by the eccentric Boston socialite. Some of the most interesting pieces are unlabeled, such as the tapestry of a lion, a sea lion and an elephant above the door of the Italian room, or the sculpted pigeon on the nearby windowsill. Relaxing weekend music concerts are held Saturday and Sunday at 1.30pm and cost an additional $5.
Cambridge
The excursion across the Charles River to Cambridge merits at least half a day, starting with a fifteen-minute ride on the Red "T" line from Park Street to Harvard Square . This is not so much a square as a number of interlocking streets, filled with small shopping malls and bookstores, at the point where Massachusetts Avenue runs into JFK and Brattle streets. It's an exceptionally lively area, filled with students from nearby Harvard University and MIT; the café terrace at Au Bon Pain makes for enjoyable people-watching, and in summer street musicians are a common sight. The Cambridge Visitor Information Booth here (Mon-Sat 9am-5pm; tel 617/497-1630) sporadically organizes walking tours in summer, and sells local maps and guides. More thorough information is available from the Harvard Events & Information Center , Holyoke Center, 1350 Massachusetts Ave (Mon-Fri 9am-5pm; tel 617/495-1573, ), which also arranges student-led tours.

Feel free to wander into Harvard Yard and around the core of the university, founded in 1636; its enormous Widener Library (named for a victim of the Titanic ) boasts a Gutenberg Bible and a first folio of Shakespeare. Five minutes' walk west along Brattle Street is the imposing yellow-fronted mansion at no. 105, known as Longfellow House , after the author of Hiawatha , who lived here until 1882. A century earlier it was briefly the headquarters of General George Washington. The site has been undergoing extensive renovation. Call 617/876-4491 or visit to check hours and admission fee. Dexter Pratt, immortalized in Longfellow's Under the spreading chestnut tree, the village smithy stands , lived at 56 Brattle St, now a popular bakery and café.

Cambridge has several first-class art museums on offer, along with more specialized science museums with a few engaging exhibits of note. The Harvard University Art Museums (Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 1-5pm; $5, free on Wed; tel 617/495-9400) encompasses over 150,000 works of art across three museums. Highlights of Harvard's substantial collection of Western art are showcased in the Fogg Art Museum , at 32 Quincy St, while the Busch-Reisinger Museum on the second floor has a small but excellent selection focusing on German Expressionists and the work of the Bauhaus. Just steps away at 485 Broadway, the Arthur M. Sackler Museum is devoted to classical, Asian and Islamic art. The Harvard Museum of Natural History , at 26 Oxford St (daily 9am-5pm; $6.50), operates three museums devoted to botany, zoology, and minerals and geology respectively.

A couple of miles southeast of Harvard Square is the Massuchusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), whose List Visual Arts Center , 20 Ames St (Tues-Thurs, Sat & Sun noon-6pm, Fri noon-8pm; tel 617/253-4680), exhibits contemporary art in all media, including photography and video, and often has accompanying lectures.
Lexington and Concord
On the night of April 18, 1775, Paul Revere rode down what is now Massachusetts Avenue from Boston, racing through Cambridge and Arlington on his way to warn the American patriots gathered at Lexington of an impending British attack. Close behind him was a force of more than four hundred British soldiers, intent on seizing the supplies that they knew the "rebels" had hoarded at Concord further north.

Although much of Revere's route has been turned into major freeways, the various settings of the first military confrontation of the Revolutionary War - "the shot heard round the world" - remain much as they were then. The triangular Town Common at Lexington was where the British encountered the opposition. Captain John Parker ordered his 77 American " Minutemen " to "stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war let it begin here." No one knows who fired the first shot, but the Minuteman Statue commemorates the eight Americans who died. Guides in period costume lead tours of the Buckman Tavern , where the Minutemen waited for the British to arrive; the Hancock-Clarke House a quarter of a mile north, where Samuel Adams and John Hancock were awakened by Paul Revere, is now a museum . All three sites are open Monday to Saturday from 10am to 5pm, on Sunday from noon to 5pm, and admission to each is $5 or $12 to visit all three.

By the time the soldiers marched on Concord the next morning the surrounding countryside was up in arms. In running battles in the town itself, and along the still-evocative Battle Road leading back toward Boston, 73 British soldiers and 49 colonials were killed over the next two days. The relevant sites now form the Minuteman National Historic Park , with visitor centers at the scenic North Bridge (174 Liberty St) in Concord and at Battle Road in Lexington. Paul Revere's ride and the Battle of Lexington are re-enacted annually on Patriot's Day, a city holiday on the third Monday in April that is also the day of the Boston Marathon.

South of Concord, Walden Pond was where Henry David Thoreau conducted the experiment in solitude and self-sufficiency described in his 1854 book Walden . "I did not feel crowded or confined in the least," he wrote of life in his simple log cabin. The site where it stood is now marked with stones, and at dawn you can still watch the pond "throwing off its nightly clothing of mist." Thoreau is interred, along with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Louisa May Alcott, atop a hill in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery , just east of the center of Concord.

As well as guided bus tours from Boston, buses run to Lexington from Alewife Station, at the northern end of the Red "T" line, and trains to Concord from North Station ($4 one-way).
Boston Waterfront
It comes as a disappointment to realize that you can't walk along Boston's waterfront for any distance, broken up as it is by over a dozen heavily developed wharfs jutting into the harbor. However, if you head straight for the sea from Quincy Market, Columbus Park , next to the ugly Marriott Long Wharf Hotel , makes a nice place to sit. Faneuil Hall originally stood at the head of Long Wharf , which stuck out nearly two thousand feet into the harbor, and was the site of the final British evacuation on March 17, 1776. Later, a thousand-foot expanse of the waterfront was filled in, and the Custom House Tower erected to mark the end of the wharf, though it too now finds itself inland, as a further thousand feet of new land has been added.

Out on the water, Boston Harbor Cruises (tel 617/227-4321 or 1-877/733-9425, ; inner and outer harbor $17, inner harbor $8) from Long Wharf are not all that exciting. The port is nowhere near as busy as when fishing boats lined the quays three or four deep on all sides. Instead you pass vast rows of freshly imported Japanese cars on the quayside, and get a close-up view of the airport. You can get off one cruise in Charlestown, to see the USS Constitution , and catch the next one back for no extra charge.

Close by on Central Wharf, the New England Aquarium (July & Aug Mon, Tues & Fri 9am-6pm, Wed & Thurs 9am-8pm, Sat & Sun 9am-7pm; Aug-June Mon-Fri 9am-5pm, Sat & Sun 9am-6pm; $13) has an outdoor pool of basking sea otters. Inside, the colossal Giant Ocean Tank, a four-story glass cylinder, holds sharks, giant turtles and tropical marine life (with an unsettling emphasis on how "delicious" certain species are). Scuba divers hand-feed the fish five times a day, and sea lion shows are held in a floating amphitheater alongside.

If you follow the shoreline past Rowe's Wharf (the base for the water shuttles to the airport), a short distance before South Station the Congress Street Bridge leads off to the left across the Fort Point Channel. Moored to the bridge is the Boston Tea Party Ship and Museum , damaged by fire in 2001 and closed through the summer of 2002; for hours and admission fee call 617/338-1773 or visit . This is not the origi nal Beaver , one of the three ships stormed by patriots in 1773, but a replica, Beaver II , sailed here from Denmark in 1973. Neither is it the original mooring, which was on the now-demolished Griffin's Wharf; instead it's the site of the house where the conspirators prepared their assault.

On the far side of the bridge, a forty-foot milk bottle , which serves as an ice-cream parlor and sandwich bar, marks the Children's Museum , 300 Congress St (Mon-Thurs, Sat & Sun 10am-5pm, Fri 10am-9pm; $7, children $6, Fri 5-9pm $1 for all). The five floors of educational exhibits are designed to entice kids into learning by doing, with plenty of buttons to push, strings to pull and tunnels to crawl through, as well as costumes, water toys and climbing structures.

The Museum of Science , in the Science Park on the Charles River Dam at the northern end of the waterfront, not far from North Station (summer daily 9am-7pm; rest of year Mon-Thurs, Sat & Sun 9am-5pm, Fri 9am-9pm; $11, children $8), has several floors of hands-on exhibits illustrating basic principles of natural and physical science. An impressive OMNIMAX cinema takes up the full height of one end of the building, and the Hayden Planetarium pays its way with Pink Floyd laser shows and the like ($7.50, children $5.50; call 617/723-2500 for show times).
Black Heritage Trail
Massachusetts was the first state to declare slavery illegal, in 1783 - partly as a result of black participation in the Revolutionary War - and a large community of free blacks and escaped slaves swiftly grew in the North End and on Beacon Hill. Ironically, very few blacks now live on Beacon Hill, but the Black Heritage Trail through the area celebrates important sites in local black history (the various visitor centers provide maps).

Pick up the Trail either at 46 Joy St, where the Abiel Smith School contains a Museum of Afro-American History (summer daily 10am-4pm, rest of year Mon-Sat 10am-4pm; free), illustrating the national civil rights campaign as well as local history, or at the African Meeting House at 8 Smith Court (off Joy St), for displays and talks from well-informed rangers. Built in 1806 as the first African-American church in the United States, this became known as "Black Faneuil Hall" during the abolitionist campaign; Frederick Douglass issued his call here for all blacks to take up arms in the Civil War. Among those who responded were the volunteers of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment , commemorated by a monument at the edge of Boston Common, opposite the State House, which depicts their farewell march down Beacon Street. Robert Lowell won a Pulitzer Prize for his poem, For the Union Dead, about this monument, and the regiment's tragic end at Fort Wagner was depicted in the movie Glory. The Trail then winds around Beacon Hill, passing schools, other institutions, and residences ranging from the small, cream clapboard houses of Smith Court to the imposing Lewis and Harriet Hayden House at 66 Phillips St, once a stop on the famous "Underground Railroad," sheltering runaway slaves from pursuing bounty hunters.
Freedom Trail
Probably the best way to orient yourself in downtown Boston - and to appreciate the city's role in American history - is to walk some or all of the Freedom Trail . You can pick up or leave this easy self-guided route anywhere - a line of red bricks marking the trail is embedded in the pavement - but technically it begins on Boston Common at the Visitor Information Center .

From here, head for the golden dome of the Massachusetts State House (free tours Mon-Sat 10am-3.30pm), which was completed in 1798 to a design by Charles Bulfinch. It remains the seat of Massachusetts' government; its most famous feature, the wooden Sacred Cod symbolizing the wealth Boston accrued from its fisheries, hangs in front of the Speaker, and faces in different directions according to which party is in office.

Though Park Street Church (July & Aug Tues-Sat 9am-3pm; rest of year by appointment; free) is by no means "the most interesting mass of bricks and mortar in America" that Henry James claimed, its ornate white steeple is undeniably impressive. This was where the orator William Lloyd Garrison launched his campaign to free the slaves on July 4, 1829. The 1600 graves of the Old Granary Burying Ground just around the corner (daily 9am-5pm; free) include those of Paul Revere, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, as well as the reputed Mother Goose, a Bostonian named Elizabeth Vergoose (or Vertigoose), said to have collected nursery rhymes for her grandchildren; while King's Chapel Burying Ground (daily 9.30am-5pm; free) contains Boston's earliest colonists and the first governor, John Winthrop. A statue of Benjamin Franklin marks the site of Boston Latin , America's first public school, attended by Franklin and Samuel Adams. Guests at the nearby Omni Parker House Hotel (not officially on the Trail) have included Charles Dickens and John Kennedy, Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh. The Old Corner Bookstore at School and Washington streets (Mon-Sat 9am-6pm, Sun noon-5pm) was a literary salon frequented by Longfellow, Thoreau and Hawthorne.

Next come the Trail's two most striking and significant buildings. At the Old South Meeting House (daily: April-Oct 9.30am-5pm; Nov-March 10am-4pm; $3), the largest building in colonial Boston and an old Puritan house of worship, Samuel Adams addressed the patriots about to carry out the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773. This was no raucous and unruly mob: they were solemn men, well aware of the likely impact of their actions. The elegant Old State House , built in 1712 and still proud, although dwarfed by surrounding skyscrapers, was the seat of colonial government. From its balcony the Declaration of Independence was read on July 18, 1776; exactly two hundred years later Queen Elizabeth II appeared on that same balcony. Inside is a museum of Boston history (daily 9am-5pm; $3). Outside, a plain ring of cobblestones set on a traffic island at the intersection of Devonshire and State streets marks the site of the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770, when British soldiers fired on a crowd that was pelting them with stone-filled snowballs, and killed five, including the black Crispus Attucks.

Modern visitors gravitate to Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall (it rhymes with Daniel; daily 9am-5pm; free) for the lively shops, restaurants and takeaways that made this a pioneer example of successful urban renewal (by the developer who went on to transform London's Covent Garden). Faneuil Hall was, how ever, once known as the "Cradle of Liberty," a meeting place for Revolutionaries and, later, abolitionists. Nearby on Union Street, step off the Freedom Trail to visit The New England Holocaust Memorial , six tall hollow glass pillars built to resemble smokestacks and etched with quotes and facts about the Holocaust, with an unusual degree of attention to its non-Jewish victims.

Passing under the six-lane John Fitzgerald Expressway and into the North End, you reach Paul Revere House , Boston's last surviving seventeenth-century house (daily: mid-April to Oct 31 9.30am-5.15pm; Nov 1 to mid-April 9.30am-4.15pm; closed Mon Jan-March; $2.50), built after the Great Fire of 1676, and home to Paul Revere - patriot, silversmith, Freemason and father of sixteen children - from 1770 until 1800. When Revere embarked upon his famous ride of April 18, 1775, to warn Lexington of imminent British attack, two lanterns were hung from the belfry of Old North Church , 193 Salem St (daily: June-Oct 9am-6pm; Nov-May 9am-5pm), to alert Charlestown in case he got caught. A little further up, from Copp's Hill Burial Ground daily 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. for free, you can see across the harbor to Charlestown: as indeed could the British, who planted their artillery here for the famous Battle of Bunker Hill.

In theory, the Freedom Trail now crosses the Charlestown Bridge, but that's a long walk over. Its final two sites are better reached by the frequent ferries from Long Wharf to Charlestown Navy Yard Monday - Friday every 15 - 30 minutes 6:30 a.m. - 8 p.m., Saturday and Sunday every 30 minutes 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. $1.00 each direction. First is the USS Constitution, also known as Old Ironsides, the oldest commissioned warship afloat in the world. Launched in Boston in 1797, it was prominent in the War of 1812. Every Fourth of July the ship is ceremonially turned around, sailed out into Boston Bay and it fires it's cannon mainly to equalize the weathering on its two sides. Unless closed due to ongoing rehabilitation work, the free tours of the ship are led by costumed guides daily from 9:30 a.m. - 3:50 p.m., or visit the USS Constitution Museum open daily in the summer from 9 a.m. - 6 p.m. the rest of the year 10 a.m. -5 p.m. free. Above the museum, the Bunker Hill Monument sits upon Breeds Hill, the actual site of the battle fought on June 17, 1775, which, although was won by the British, did much to dissuade them that they could hope to triumph in the end. A spiral staircase of almost three hundred steps leads to the top: a tiny museum daily from 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. free at the base has dated but enlightening exhibits on the famous battle.

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