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habeasdorkus
Nov 3, 2013

Royalty is a continuous shitposting motion.
Ok, lets get this party started with the Hub of the Solar System.


  • City Name: Boston, MA
  • City Nicknames: The Hub of the Solar System, The Hub of the Universe, The City on a Hill, The American Athens, The Cradle of Liberty, Beantown.
  • Major teams: Red Sox (MLB), Celtics (NBA), Bruins (NHL), Patriots (NFL, but located 45 minutes out of town in Foxboro), Revolution (MLS, also play at Foxboro)

  • What to do:
  • 1) Watch one of the most storied teams in baseball at the crown jewel of MLB parks, Fenway.
  • 2) Walk the Freedom Trail, which is 300+ years of history in 2.5 miles. It'll take you across half the city, and show off many of the high points in one of the oldest cities in the New World.
  • 3) Have dinner and dessert in the North End, which is towards the end of the Freedom Trail and has an amazing collection of great Italian restaurants packed into a tiny area.
  • 4) If you have kids, or like museums and aquariums, the Boston Science Museum ($29 age 12+/$25 age 3-11) is among the best out there, period, and the Boston Aquarium ($31 adults/$22 kids) is one of the very best in the Northeast. The main tank is gigantic, and is home to the 95 year old Myrtle the sea turtle.
  • 5) If you don't have kids or have extremely precocious ones, the Boston Symphony Orchestra is one of the four or five best in the world, and plays right in downtown every season but summer. The Museum of Fine Arts is also right in the heart of the city, and has a fantastic collection of American masters. Literally down the street from the MFA is the Isabella Stewart Gardener, which if anything has an even better collection and is the center of a wild story about the most valuable art theft in history.
  • 6) The Boston Common and the adjoining Public Gardens are real dang nice, albeit tiny compared to something like Central Park.
  • 7) Whale Watches from the Boston Harbor, as well as other cruises from the harbor. You'll have a good chance of seeing some big honkin animals, and the harbor itself is pretty placid.
  • 8) If you're in town for the Beanpot college hockey tournament that takes place in February, you'll get a chance to see some excellent college programs in Boston College, Boston University, Northeastern, and Harvard compete for a trophy that goes back nearly 70 years at this point. The games are played at the Boston Garden.
  • 9) TAKE THE SUBWAY. The T isn't the best subway in the world, but for getting around the fairly small center of the city or into the immediate suburbs like Cambridge/Somerville and it's going to be vastly faster (and less frustrating) than driving.
  • 10) New England Clam Chowder Herman Melville had chowder right when he described it in Moby Dick. There's multiple places with claims on the best chowder, but Legal Seafood is always good, has close to a dozen locations in the city, and is a very solid A- exemplar of the style. My personal favorite is at Doyles, which is an old Irish pub in Jamaica Plain on the Orange Line near the Green Street stop. Easy to visit if you take in the Sam Adams brew tour nearby.

  • What to avoid:
  • 1) DRIVING IN BOSTON. I lived in Boston for 7 years of my adult life, the second most amount of time I've spent anywhere, and I never owned a car during that period because driving in Boston is crazymaking. Beyond the traffic that you'll find in any major city, Boston's laid out in an effort to drive people to insanity. Moreover, Boston proper is a tiny city in land size, you can walk from the edge of Brookline in the west to the edge of the bay in the North End in less than two hours, and you'll pass most of the major tourist sights on that walk. If you drive in for your visit, park at where you're staying and then don't get back into your car until you're leaving.
  • 2) Seats at Fenway in the right field grandstand, they're not only tiny and facing towards the Green Monster, but you'll probably also get a steel support beam blocking a part of your view. Bleacher views are generally better, and cheaper.
  • 3) The Union Oyster House- it's neat eating in a 200+ year old restaurant, and it's not bad food, but it's overrated and somewhat pricey.
  • 4) Getting stuck out at night because you took my advice about not driving. Boston is the City that Sleeps, and the T shuts down around 1:30 a.m. IIRC bars are also all closed by around 2:00 a.m. Cabs are reasonably available in the downtown area, and if you're further out there's always Uber or Lyft.
  • 5) Saying "Pahk youah cah at Havahd Yahd." We get it, you find the accent sexy. But we've heard it from everyone. Also, most people don't have much of an accent.

  • How to get there:
  • By Car: Either I-90 (aka the Mass Pike) or I-95 from the south. Be warned that traffic gets seriously snarled every day from about 7am-11am and 4pm-8pm, especially once you get inside the 495 belt.
  • By Plane: Logan International, which is about 20 minutes from downtown if you're lucky enough to hop on the transit bus to the rail/subway hub at South Station right as you walk out.
  • By Train: Amtrak runs right into the center of town, and if you're starting anywhere between NYC to DC you should highly consider the Acela instead of flying. The prices are similar, your door to door time is going to be about the same, and instead of being stuck on a plane you get to ride on a train that serves beer. DC to Boston is about a 6 hours, and deposits you at South Station in the middle of the city. The Northeast Regional is also an option, but takes 8+ hours.

  • Stuff reasonably close that's interesting:
  • Foxboro: If you're coming out for an NFL or MLS game, you're going to end up here anyways. There's not much around other than a decent sized moderately upscale shopping and dining around the stadium itself. 30-45 minutes drive, also reachable by the commuter rail on game days.
  • Salem: They've got one thing they're known for, and boy do they lean into it. Their Halloween celebrations are a sight to see, and their Witch Museum is p good as I remember. About 30 minutes north of Boston, reachable by commuter rail and ferry, both take ~45 minutes.
  • Cape Cod: Really only worth visiting in the summer. Lots of good little restaurants and galleries in Provincetown, and plenty of pretty scenery and beaches. The water is freezing though, and if you want to stay on the cape you'll need to plan well ahead as guest houses rent out quick. Provincetown is reachable in less than an hour by taking the ferry from the Boston harborfront, but if you drive and get caught up in traffic at the bridge it could be two hours to get to the main tourist area.
  • Springfield: Home of the Basketball Hall of Fame and a billion dollar MGM casino. The Basketball Hall of Fame is a unique, and excellent, experience but if you want gambling there's a casino just north of Boston that's now open. 90 minutes away on a good day, but often more like 2 hours.
  • The Berkshires: The prettiest place in Massachusetts, with excellent hiking (including parts of the Adirondack and M&M trails) and dotted with towns that have amazing culture. Lenox is the hub of these, with both Shakespeare and Company and Tanglewood. The former is a fantastic Shakespearean corps who have put on some of the very finest performances I've ever seen. The latter is the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and is a massive, beautiful complex with a gigantic lawn where you can bring in a full danged picnic and listen to one of the best Symphony Orchestras in the world. Add to that a world class contemporary art museum at MassMOCA in North Adams, and a shockingly good but small art museum at the Clark on the Williams College campus, and you can see why the Berkshires gets invaded by New Yorkers on a regular basis. If you're there in the fall, you'll also see some outrageous displays of color from the changing leaves. The Berkshires are roughly 2 to 2.5 hours from Boston (and about 3 from NYC), although North Adams is much more like 3 or 3.5 hours as it's right in the northwest corner of the state.

habeasdorkus fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Aug 21, 2019

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habeasdorkus
Nov 3, 2013

Royalty is a continuous shitposting motion.
Lobster rolls are loving amazing, and get them with the butter and not the mayo you fools!

habeasdorkus
Nov 3, 2013

Royalty is a continuous shitposting motion.
Speaking from my past trips to Milwaukee to see friends, the Calatrava is great, the Safehouse is a very cool and good bar, and if you're going to the Sprecher tour and are not with kids, do the cheese and beer tasting menu because it's loving awesome.

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