Boston for Labor Day

Finally, I am getting around to blogging about my Labor Day trip to Boston! Michelle came up from Dallas and Melanie came up from South Carolina to spend the weekend with me in Boston. Some people have asked us, why Boston?? Well, we wanted to get together - I hadn't seen Mel in almost 2 years - and they've both come to NYC (Michelle, in fact, has come no less than 5 times). I had been wanting to explore Boston, so I mentioned it and they were both on board! We had a great time together and I think I have officially seen Boston now! I like Boston, but I don't LOVE Boston like I've loved other cities I've visited. We stayed at The Millennium Hotel in the North End. I found a great special they were having and it was a great place to stay. It was convenient to everything and was very nice. They were under renovation, hence the special, but our room had already been done and it was so nice - it was really just the lobby that was still under construction. A bonus we loved was that they gave us yummy lemonade and cookies each afternoon. So here's what we did:

• Frequented the market outside our hotel. Each Saturday and Sunday there is a huge farmer's market that happened to be right outside our hotel. We got some awesome bananas, plums, and raspberries that we ate for breakfast each morning.


• Duck Tour - I'd heard from no less than 3 very different people that these are really good in Boston and worth the time and money. We were not super impressed. Maybe it was our guide. But, it was a good way to see a quick overview of Boston before taking off on our own.


• Visiting Harvard & MIT. When I moved to the Northeast, one of my goals was to visit all the Ivy League schools in the area. I'm not doing so great with that since Harvard was my first...although, I have seen Columbia since it's right here, but I'd like to see more of it before I count it off. Melanie pointed our that MIT is right next to Harvard and she was interested in that, so we did both. We were super unimpressed. Harvard was not as pretty of a campus as I expected. Unfortunately, they do not do tours during this time of year which probably would have made it more interesting. MIT was hardly a campus at all - just a bunch of modern looking buildings. We did enjoy the bookstores and ate at a great little cafe for lunch near Harvard.


• Dinner in the North End (Boston's Little Italy). We ate at Piccola Venezia and I would highly recommend it. It was a great meal - Michelle's lobster ravioli was especially good.


• Boston Red Sox game. Most fun baseball game I've ever been to. We all 3 left as Red Sox fans. We went to the game late hoping scalpers would be dropping their prices, but they were still ridiculously expensive. We ended up at the counter and lucked into $20 standing-room-only tickets. The standing area is down really low and you're allowed to sit in vacant seats, so we did have seats for some of the game. The game was one of the favorite parts of the trip for all 3 of us!


• Freedom Trail - the freedom trail is a very organized walk throughout Boston taking you by most of the historic places. It was a lot of walking and a lot of history, but we had fun following the red brick trail throughout Boston. I'd say the cute chapels were probably our favorite parts.


• We tried to go to the Boston Tea Party ship and museum, only to discover it burned down in December. What? Isn't that pretty significant? We're not sure how none of the 3 of us heard about that at the time.


• Walking through the Beacon Hill neighborhood. I loved this area! It is so cute and charming. Darling homes on cobblestone roads. There is a great little street with cute stores and tons of antique stores. There is a little market there where Martha Stewart is known to do some shopping. It's also the neighborhood where John Kerry lives.


• Dinner at Ye Ole Union Oyster House. This is a very historic restaurant - in fact, it's the oldest restaurant in the U.S.! I had lobster and we sat in a booth across from the booth that JFK used to always sit in.


• Dessert at the Parker House restaurant. This is inside the Omni Hotel and is where both Parker House Rolls and Boston Cream Pie originated. We went to split a piece of the pie, but Michelle also got the waitress to bring us some rolls to try. Both were delicious!


• Strolling though Boston Commons. I like this park a lot, but it is much smaller than Central Park. It is very pretty. We had hoped to ride the Swan Boats, but the line was really long, so we decided it wasn't worth it.


• Brunch and shopping on Newbury. We had brunch at Stephanie's and although the wait was really long, the food was totally worth it. I love the little shops on Newbury. We also strolled through the neighborhood there - I think it's known as the Back Bay.


• Stopped by Cheer's for the obligatory pics.


• Dinner at Upper Crust pizza - amazing pizza, seriously.


• Pastries at Mike's - you may remember me talking about this place from when I was there at 4th of July. I can't get over how good their cannoli's are!


• Walked through Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market -- lots of shopping, lots of food booths, and some history all combined! I had a really good lobster roll for lunch here!


• Went to the top of the Custom House Tower for great views of the city! They allow people up daily only at 2:00. The Marriott currently has a super-long lease there and part of their agreement was to allow the public to take in the tower views once every day. I highly recommend it!

• Isabella Stewart Gardner museum. This was a really great find. It is a museum in an old mansion - the owner left their goods to the public. They had some interesting art, but I really loved the mansion itself and all the furniture! It was difficult to pull myself away from some chairs I wanted to steal!

Check out my Boston pics, HERE!