The prevailing philosophy is that if you don’t know where you are, you’ve got no business being there in the first place. 
My favorite part of living here is the lack of signs for the major roads. They’ll label every little pissant street, way & public alley, but Og forbid anyone should put up a sign for Mass Ave.
You can be tootling down Public Alley #441 and spill out suddenly onto a major thoroughfare and have no idea you’re on Mass Ave (a.k.a. Big-A**-Important-Street-of-Streets)
You mean they run tours of your office? Kewl. 
My opinion of the Stata Center has been registered elsewhere on these boards (in that popular thread from a few months back on bad architecture). I’m sure it was a nice looking building before it started to fall down.
I work near Kendall Square too. Did your building get flooded out last week?
I second the motion for Durgin Park Restaurant in the Quincy Market shopping complex next to Faneuil Hall. Used to walk there for lunch often. Used to be two lines, the tourist line (long and slow) and the lounge line, where if you got a libation first, you got into the restaurant quicker. Haven’t been there in a long time, tho. The Museum of Science is in Boston on the Charles River Dam that separates Boston from Cambridge. It now has the fantastic Zakim Bridge in front of/over it. That’s the widest cable-stayed bridge in the world and part of the notorious Big Pig, er Dig, the $14 billion tunnel/bridge complex under the downtown that took 12 years to build. That’s worth a trip (they have tours) if you’re into that. It may still be leaking. If you want to get high, visit the observation decks at either the 52-story Pru Tower (I used to work on the 48th floor), or the 60-story mirror-clad John Hancock tower in Copley Square. The latter is beside a 150 (?)-year-old church, with a very contrasting architecture. It also was the one whose windows kept shattering and falling to the street until they boarded them up and then installed a mass damper in the upper stories to absorb the undulations. The New England Aquarium, on the harborfront, is impressive, 'tho I’ve never been there. In the Italian North End you can visit Paul Rever’s House, Bunker Hill and its monument, and the US Frigate Constitution (Old Ironsides). Out Huntington Avenue, are the Museum of Fine Art and the Gardner Museums (I went thru college across the street from the MFA).
Walk the cobblestone lanes of Beacon Hill (I used to live on the top/10th floor on its summit and walked to work in 7 minutes (rent was $125/month, like I said, a long time ago)). Visit the middle-of-town Boston Common and Public Gardens, and the Champs-Elyses-style Commonwealth Avenue, radiating from the Gardens to Fenway Park )home of the SOX) at Kenmore Square. BTW, starting at the Gardens, the grid section cross streets are named alphabetically between those points-Arlington, Berkely, Clarendon, Dartmouth, Exeter, Fairfield, Gloucester and then the breaker Mass. Ave. On the Common, across from Charles Bulfinch’s gold-domed State House, is the impressive memorial to Robert Gould Shaw’s Black Troops glorified in the movie, “Glory”. Try the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library at what used to be called Columbia Point. And while landing or taking off from Logan Airport, check out the three-decker close-in urbs, East Boston (under Logan’s aircraft approaches), South Boston, and the 1860’s Back Bay and the gentrified South End. Most of the city is on filled land (read “Boston: A Topographical History”, by Walter Muir Whitehill). The airport is on filled land in the middle of Boston Harbor, 1 mile from Downtown! The Ted Williams, Sumner, and Callahan Tunnels run between the historic North Shore, Logan and Downtown. Take cabs if you want to get stuck in traffic. Do not drive. Better yet, pick up a T System map and ride the subway or walk.
The Freedom Trail is very historic and patriotic-the Old State House, whence was read the Declaration of Independece, overlooking the site of the Boston Massacre (I overlooked its roof from my 21st floor office at One Boston Place, the big black building with the box on top) next to Maison Robert, (if still there), a fine French restaruant in the OLD City Hall. You can’t miss the “new” City hall, with its overhanging crenellated eaves that project out further as you go up, surrounded be a sea of brick, next to the oldest buildings in the city. Across Tremont Street from the Parker House is the Granary Burial Ground where lie buried John Hancock, Paul Revere, Samuel Adams and Ben Franklin’s parents.
I haven’t spent any time in the city for many years but studied and worked there for as many. Well, probably TMI already, but I think you can still get scrod at the Parker House (Bostonian “in” joke).
Not yet, but maybe once I’m rich and famous and Linux has changed the world.
It took me a little while to warm up to it, but now that it’s finished and I’ve walked around it a bit (and inside it, once), I really like it. It would probably be too much if every building looked like that, but as a contrast to the mundane buildings of the neighborhood (and the world), it works.
The street in front of our office was flooded, but I think our building was spared. I was really hoping they wouldn’t be able to drain it fast enough and it would freeze. No such luck.
Which building do you work in? It would be hysterical if we were in the same place. And are there any decent places for lunch around here that I’m not already tired of?
I’m pretty sure you can still get to the observation deck at the Pru, but the John Hancock one is closed now, even to employees of the building (though I work in Copley, our main office is in Hancock). Just didn’t want you to try and get up there and find out you can’t!
Please note that since 9/11 the Hancock observatory has been closed permanently. You can still go to the top of the Pru, though.
Jinx, badbadrubberpiggy!
I appreciate the update and apologize for the disinfo, as I haven’t been to/thru Boston for more than 10 years. I guess the old stuff is still there, though, and I hope I got the rest right. La plus ca change, le plus ca reste le meme. Love the town.
I don’t think we could be in the same building…we are the only company in our building and if we worked in the same place I think we would have figured it out by now! Our biotech company took over an historical old building a few years back, you can see the Stata building from some of our windows…do the words “Kaplan Furniture Co.” mean anything to you?
Lunch places: many people are partial to the Thailand Cafe on Mass. Ave, in the shadow of the former Necco factory which is now Novartis. Many people where I work go to lunch there once a week, and one guy I swear goes every day. Good lunch specials, fresh ingredients, served really quick and cheap. There is also an Indian place on Main Street (forget the name) a few doors down from Bertucci’s, they do a good all you can eat lunch buffet.
When I have time and the weather is nice I hike into Central Sq. for lunch at El Picante, a hole in the wall type Mexican place. Supposedly their food is California influenced Mexican but I’m not enough of a conossieur to know, I just know I like it.
Maybe we could meet for lunch or a beer sometime? It sounds like we are only a few blocks apart.
Although I’ve been there since, the last time I drove in Boston was in the 70’s, when I got to an intersection with signs to Providence, R.I. Three of them. Straight ahead. Left. Right. All roads lead to Providence.
Although it’s been 30 years, one of the best meals I’ve ever had was at Anthony’s Pier IV. Perhaps someone knows the error of my ways, but as I say, it has been 30 years.
Hope you enjoy your visit 
Thanks to everyone for the responses. This is another example of what makes this such a great place; to cite only one example, I have a Fodor’s Guide for Boston but they make no mention of the Ducktours.
As I’ve never been to the East Coast I am really looking forward to it.
Actually I almost mentioned Anthony’s…as a place to avoid. Consensus seems to be that it peaked about 20-30 years ago but has declined since then. I went to it about 8 years ago and found it just ok, not really worth the hype.
No matter what else happens, no matter what anyone else tells you, do not drive.
Other than that, have a blast! Eat at Santarpios or Diminos while you’re in town. Both are in East Boston, not far from T stops off the blue line.
Damn, that’s too bad, but good to know! 
Perhaps one of these days I’ll get up there to enjoy some of the great places mentioned here