Things to do in Boston off the beaten path

In My Humble Opinion
1

I will be attending a conference in Boston next week and was originally planning on spending the weekend prior (this Sat.-Mon.) driving around New England with the Mrs. Now she can’t make it, so I’m stuck in Boston on my own for three days.

I love Boston and have seen many of the main tourist/historical attractions and museums. This goes for Cambridge, too. I have not, however, had a chance to go wandering around much and am looking forward to exploring some of the more obscure/eclectic/out-of-the-way parts of the city. Do any Boston Dopers have some suggestions for what I could fill my day with? Please note that now that my wife isn’t coming, I will not have a rental car, so everything has to be accessible by public transit.

Thanks! :slight_smile:

2

  1. Go to the Used book shop on West St., just off the Boston Common. Great stuff. (Unfortunately, the Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop on Newbury St. has closed. Sniff.)

  2. Go to the shops on Newbury Street. There’s a weird mix of stuff, and usually something interesting. See the Condom Shop, downstairs near Mass Ave.

  3. Look at the weird statuary along the Charles River Esplanade and on Commonwealth Ave in Back Bay. Don’t miss the statue of Leif Ericson just west of Mass Ave on Commonwealth Ave.

4.) Go to MIT and go to the fourth floor of building 7 – Strobe Alley, with “Doc” Edgerton’s stuff on display. Or the Ship Museum in the Hart School of Naval Architecture. Or the display of famous MIT hacks in Building 27.

5.) Go to Hardvard and look at the weird architecture. There are life-sizeed bronze Rhinos outside the biology building. Harvard’s got a lot of nifty museums, too, in case you haven’t seen them.

6.) Have a walk through the Mt. Auburn Cemetary in Cambridge.

7.) Hop a bus and come to Saugus, where there’s the First Ironworks in the Colonies (not to be confused with the First Ironworks in the Colonies in Quincy, Mass, or the First Ironworks in the Colonies in NJ). This one has been reconstructed, and it works.

8.) Take the red line down to Quincy and look in at the Adams family household.

9.) Hop a bus to Salem and see the stuff. Salem’s always interesting. Even if you’ve seen the usual tourist stuff – the witchcraft stuff, the House of Seven Gables, and the Peabody-Essex Museum, I’ll bet you haven’t seen Salem Pioneer Village (reconstructed settler village, right in the town of Salem – kinda like Plymouth Plantation, but within easy distance of Boston)

10.) Gawk at the Leonard P. Zakim-Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge, the crown jewel of the Big Dig, that still isn’t open.

11.) Hang out in Harvard Square. Or at Coolidge Corner, or at Faneuil Hall/Quincy Market Place.

12.) Sadly, the really big bookstores are gone (Waterstone’s, virtually all of the Paperback Booksmith’s/Buddenbrooks). But you can still find plenty of stores around downtown Boston, Harvard Square, etc.

13.) You probably walked the Freedom Trail, but have you walked the Black Heritage Trail?

14.) Try to find the symmetrical patterns made in dark brick on the vast brick sea that is Boston City Hall Plaza.

15.) Walk across the Harvard Bridge (Mass Ave as it crosses the Charles River) and count the Smoots.

16.) Visit the MIT Science Fiction Society (if they’re open – fourth floor of the Student Center at 84 Mass Ave) and look through probably the biggest open collection of SF anywhere.

3

Wow, CalMeacham certainly has me beat. Let’s see… what’s left?

I don’t know if the Boston Atheneaum finished renovating or not, but you could give that a try. Sure it’s just a member library, but Hawthorne was a member and it’s supposedly haunted.

If you like Jazz, stop in at Wally’s Cafe on Mass Ave (near Columbus). It’s a hole in the wall, but the music is always fantastic. Bands never go on before 9 and it’s usually closer to 10, but I usually try to get there by 8 so I can get a seat. If you think you don’t mind standing, think again. Regardless of which night you go, it will be packed.

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Take a walk in the Arnold Arboretum, out in Jamaica Plains/Roslindale, or in the Fells, north of the city, or a short hike in the Blue Hills. You can get to all of them via bus.

Visit the Boston Public Library and check out the amazing artwork.

Go shopping in Filene’s Basement. While it is shopping, it’s really a cultural experience.

Take in an IMAX movie at the Museum of Science or the Aquarium.

Try and catch a game at the Fleet Center. Both the Celtics and the Bruins are in town this weekend, I think, and you should be able to find tickets.

Take a harbor cruise, visit the Boston Harbor Islands National Park, or just go out to the fort on ??? Island.

Take a ferry from downtown to Provincetown for the day. Have a Clambake Dinner at the Lobster Pot.

Take the commuter rail to Lowell and visit the National Historic Park.

Walk in the North End, pick up some canoli or have a fine expresso.

Have Dim Sum on Sunday in Chinatown. I recommend Chau Chow Palace or China Pearl.

5

I second the China Pearl suggestion.
Other interesting things to do:

Go eastbound on the green line get off at North Station and try to
change to an westbound train without exiting the station. It’s a challenge. :smiley: About a year ago (the last time I was on a green line train east of Park) you could see down into the Big Dig from some of the sections of elevated track. It was dizzying but cool.

Walk through the Back Bay or down Beacon St after dark. People will have the lights on inside their houses and you can see through a lot of the filmy curtains into some really nice houses.

Rollerblade, bicycle or jog on Memorial Drive on Sunday - they close it to auto traffic.

I’ll post more ideas as I they come to me.

6

If you follow the advice of CalMeacham… instead of taking a bus to Salem Mass, take the comuter rail from North Station (aka the Fleet Center), the commuter rail will get you to Salem a lot faster. (Bobo takes that train everyday… trust me, the commuter rail is faster)

If you want to stay in boston, go have some fun at “Flat Top Johny’s” at 1 Kendel Square… the sandwhiches are great, the beer selection is excellent… and you have a 1 in 7 chance of seeing me there (once a week I play there… I’m a guy with a shaved head and a goatee, shooting with a Lucasi) FTJ’s is a club-type place that also has pretty nice pool tables… that only applies if you play pool.

And if you don’t want all the hassel, tell any cabby to take you to The Capital Grille, the beef is excellent, and the Scotch selection is beautiful.

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I third the trip to Salem. And if you do it, DEFINETLY take the train, not the bus. It’s the Newburyport/Rockport line from North Station. The 5:10 usually leaves from track 2 or 3.

Bobo, I’ve probably seen you then, as I rode it the last 2 summers, every day. Where do you get on?

8

Too bad it’s cold. In the North End, you can still smell the molasses on hot days from the molasses flood in the-- was it '20s? No, really! Pick up one of those whoopie pies, too, those are goooood!

I second the Filene’s Basement suggestion. In Quincy, the dingy little craphole I wasted a year of my life in, they have the Western Hemisphere’s largest crane. You can sound just like Cliff Claven pointing that out.

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Castle island.

If you’re the musem type, the Peabody Museum at Harvard has some good archeological stuff (I think they also hold a highly revered collection of glass flowers).

You could wander out to Jamacia Plain for an afternoon. Walk down Centre street and you’ll find the original J.P. Lick’s, can get you’re plam read in the local Santaria store (Spanish only), there’s a great Cuban food place (along with may other eateries), and a couple of really good Irish pub’s.

What about the Christian Science Center on Mass Ave? There’s a big ol’ stain glass map of the world that’s worth seeing.

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10 minutes south of the city, the Blue Hills in Milton and Canton offer many trails and beautiful views of the city.

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The Glass Flower Exhibit is at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, not the Peobody. Both museums are pretty interesting.

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If you go to China Pearl on Sunday, be sure to get there before 10:00 AM - by 10:30, there are usually at least 200 people in line waiting to get in, snaking down two flights of stairs and into the street.