Hi fellow travellers and a special hello to anyone from Boston, and thankyou for making our trip so good! My 7 year old daughter, husband and I spent 5 days in Boston and a week in Cape Cod (reviews to follow soon!) and had a great time. The weather was lovely, mild and sunny (with a little rain and chill later) we did not meet a single person we could complain about, everyone was lovely and chatty. We had a terrific time at the circus (half price tickets!) and ate, well.... perhaps a little too well. LOVE crab cakes with aoili. Mmmmm. Had THE best fish and chips at the oldest eatery in Boston (and as an Aussie I don't say that lightly) and most places even had my favourite Californian chardonnay. Couldn't get any better!
I recommend Boston as a holiday destination, very tiny and easily walked around and the outlying towns, postcard pretty every one of them.
Thanks, I'll get to work on my hotel, vacation and restaurant reviews
RobynAP

Hi from Italy, I'll be in Boston in a few weeks for book presentation, Gala at Symphony Hall and TV interview and am looking for a good hotel, B&B to stay at . Can you give me some advice?

Glad you had a good time, Robyn! I was wondering how your trip went, so thanks for reporting in.

Mary Jane, can you give us some idea of what price range you're looking at?

Robyn, so pleased you had a nice visit in "Beantown", it really is a great city, very walkable...just like Florence! Hope you got to the North End for a taste of Italy.

Mary Jane, I'm not sure of where you can stay, like Amy asked..what kind of prices range are you thinking of? Anyway, I'd love to get together while you're here, maybe we can do a mini (or maxi) GTG.
Keep us posted on your dates.

Ciao,
Mindy

Thanks for your help, I barely had time to send that message and I was contacted by a gentleman in Cambridge who, along with his wife, had stayed with us in Vetralla a few years back . They were winners in the silent auction that benefitted the Longy School of Music. We'll be staying with them and going in to the Benefit Gala together at the Boston Symphony Hall. The School benefits when they auction off a week at our Vetralla townhouse apt. and the nicest people have come to visit .
The Newsletter (no 53) with my itinerary is available...I cant figure out how to attach it here. Let me know if you want a copy, I'll email to you...and tomorrow it should be on my website.

Hey Amy, we visited Newton on our trip, lovely town. In fact there is a good chance I have a photo of your house (I took hundreds of photos of houses as they were all so lovely) I was that crazy person leaning out of the window of the car taking photos saying "wow, did you see that one?!"
It was a beautiful day and we wish we had more time.
RobynAP

quote:

The weather was lovely, mild and sunny

Wow, you were sure lucky in your timing then, as you managed to miss a record-setting rainfall! It just wouldn't stop raining, and the worst places had 19 inches of rain (an all-time record) with terrible floods. Tuesday afternoon when the sun finally came out, everywhere you went people were just standing outside looking up, because it had been so long since we had seen sunshine!

As a native Bostonian, I'm so glad to hear that you enjoyed us and didn't even complain about the traffic. Roz, you got that right, unbelievable rain eh??

Robyn,
Where did you end up staying on the Cape? We are going in September for a week and have picked a place in Chatham.

Glad to hear you had a great time. I love Boston too!

Hey all
We arrived just after some pretty constant rain but just in time for the sun. And yes, we did have some traffic issues on the day we hired a car to see the outlying towns, everything was great until we wanted to get back into the city, then it all went terribly wrong (and that is with a navigation system in the car!)It took 45 minutes to drive from the uni in Cambridge to Franklin St in Boston, mostly because we were on the wrong freeway "arm" and ended up skimming the edge of the city and shooting off to another area over another bridge, north of Boston. We went in a circle again and this time managed to get across to the right exit and ended up getting "home". It was kind of funny though, we ended up shouting a resounding "NO!" at the navigation voice as she tried to send us off on the loop again.
We stayed at Chatham on the Cape in a lovely house I found on the internet. I'm just trying to track down the original site I found it on the web and to post a review. The lady we organised it through was so lovely, nothing was too much trouble and the house was one of the nicest, cleanest, well stocked places we have ever stayed. It was called Shannan-i-gans, on Shannon Lane, Chatham. Being off season, it cost us $850 for the week, that included linens and towels. We walked to the beach, but it was a bit of a hike, being cold and windy we didn't care as we were happy to potter around the island and in the town. The house was huge (to us)and very comfortable.
Found it!!! http://www.weneedavacation.com/Cape/7548.htm
Have a great time!
RobynAP

Cambridge is a lovely place for walks as well, and so many bookshops!

Hope you've survived the rain and floods; it's been raining steadily here as well but people in nearby New England have got the worst of it.

So happy to hear that you enjoyed your stay here in Boston and the Cape-and especially that the weather cooperated! It's raining again today after only 2 sunny days!
I often forget what a lovely city Boston can be, with so much to explore. I have promised myself to start looking at "my city" as a tourist would and explore all it's nooks and crannies-especially when I start to get restless to travel again. Just last week I took in a lovely American watercolor and pastel exhibit at the Harvard Fogg Art museum(including works by Hopper-one of my favorites) in Cambridge,a 5 minute walk from my house,and was blown away to discover a Botticelli work there! It had been so long since I visited this museum that I didn't know this piece was there! That really helped to cure my return from Italy blues.

Colleen, another great place to soak in Italian atmsophere is the ISabella S. Gardner museum. Check out the 3 armchairs in the Gothic room: the fourth is here.

Robyn,

So glad you had a good time, and as others have mentioned your timing couldn't have been better for escaping some serious rain and constant gray skies. I am laughing picturing you all yelling "No!" to the navigation voice in the car! Looking forward to your reviews!

Mary Jane,
The Isabella Stewart Gardner museum is one of my favorite museums anywhere! I haven't been in awhile though and certaintly not thinking about Italian gothic pieces. Thanks for giving me another reason to go back!

Robyn,
Your rental looks great! I think I came across it while doing my research. Scott's folks stay in Chatham a lot and recommended Harding's Beach as a good location. I found a nice, big place that is probably a bit of a walk to the beach; but it has a nice water view from the deck.

Thank goodness we're going in the off season because we couldn't afford it in summer!

Thank you, fellow Bostonians!

You have given me a couple of new ideas for "field trips". Haven't visited the Gardner Museum yet but would love to see it. Also haven't visited the Fogg Art Museum yet.

We visited the Harvard Museum of Natural History w/ our 2 grandsons a while back. They have great dinosaur exhibits. My grandsons loved it there. Lots to see and do there.

We missed the dinosaurs, shame, they would have been good for our little girl. never mind, another reason to return We loved the Froggy Park on the Common and enjoyed the very tame squirrels and best of all was the time we spent wandering around Beacon Hill "choosing" our next home and then "furnishing" it from the antique stores.
One thing that I hadn't expected on the Cape was all the wild life. We stood on the sand at Provincetown under the deepest blue sky, watching whales pass by!!! It was amazing. There was a fox in Chatham and, I swear, I was standing at the kitchen window one morning and a huge coyote walked past. Actually, that one freaked me out a bit as it was so large and my little daughter liked to play outside in the fenceless yard. Do they harm people? I never said anything to her, but did keep an extra eye on her out there. We even had a chipmonk pay a visit. Now that was cute!

What a wonderful coincidence. I logged on to post a question about Boston, and here was the first entry for the day.

I'm going to be in Boston from the 10th to 16th of October, attending the International Conference on the Book - (13th - 15th) and the Harvard University Medical Bookshop. I guess that only gives me a couple of days for a mini holiday.

Robyn, what would you suggest with just two days?

Can anyone advise if the LONGWOOD STUDIO SUITE AT FENWAY would be a suitable location to attend the conference at Emerson College?


http://bnbboston.com/boston-bnbs/b&bs_4a-3.htm

Hi Gavin, I've followed a lot of your posts on other areas of this board. Our visit had a different slant to most people's I guess, my husband had been working in America since December last year and my little girl and I went there to see him and bring him home! So our focus was on being together and sometimes I struggle to tell people what we did with our time, I think we spent most of it walking around in a little huddle! As I've mentioned, the weather was lovely (this was the middle of April) so we walked all over Boston, with lots of stops to play as we had a child with us. We were there for Easter, so saw a beautiful Cathedral that had the most ornate altar (and lovely priest giving mass) in the South area. We went to Fenilial Hall Market but didn't like it at all so left quickly, as we thought it was a market but it is just a collection of overpriced tourist carts. We did find a counter selling half price tickets to plays in Boston though and spent that evening at the circus which was the best fun. We had hoped to see the Red Sox play, but it didn't work out for us with tickets, but we didn't mind, mostly I remember eating...
We stayed at the Langham Hotel, somewhere we wouldn't normally stay but I found a good rate on the internet. We ended up in an executive room with two double beds and sitting space and were treated like royalty the whole time. The rack rate was $US400 but we paid $US238 because of a special deal on at the time. I was worried it was in a dead part of town, but it was handy to everything and we loved every second we were there. Probably not where you want for the reason you will be in town. Please tell me you aren't flying all that way for six days!!! The flight over from the time we lifted off in Melbourne to the time we touched down in Boston was 25 1/2 hours. Not pretty. I wish I could be of more help, but we didn't "do" that much, yet while we were there, we didn't stop! We literally just spent time exploring the various neighbourhoods.
Have a brilliant time.
Cheers
RobynAP

Gavin!!!
The apartment is somewhat on the edge of town, near the Hospital area, some colleges, and Fenway. The residential area in back of the main roads there(Brookline Ave is rather ugly and commercial) has some good, inexpensive restaurants. That particular corner is noisy, so I would want to know which end of the building the apartment faces. You'd be a short walk to the Green Line on the "T", which will get you to the Boylston stop (where Emerson is) in five stops. You'd also be just down the street from another SlowTrav Moderator.

Gavin, what a fascinating conference! Nowadays we are used to topics that are narrowed-down as much as possible: such a far-reaching theme! http://book-conference.com/

Looking at the site, I see that Emerson College is located right on Boston Commons, so I'm sure you have a wide range of accomodation choices. The site only indicates the Hyatt-Regency, oddly enough - usually such sites indicate a range of accomodation, and there will be many choices near there.

I'd certainly much rather stay at your studio suite than at the Hyatt! So nice to be able to make your own coffee or tea in the morning, putter around a bit, before you go to the conference. Five stops on the "T" is not a long ride...

Gavin, looking at the B&B/apartment site you found, I see some places in that price range a bit closer to Emerson, and in more walkable neighborhoods.

Thanks Robyn. No, I'm not flying there direct. I'm going to the Frankfurt Book Fair from the 2nd to the 6th, then taking three days somewhere on the Rhine near Frankfurt before flying to Boston.
Hell! You just prompted me to reflect on my full itinerary and I realised I'm flying from Boston to London to Sydney in one extended series of flights. What was I thinking?

Amy, with a very limited map, I was having difficulty finding which of the apartments were closer to Emerson. Can you check thge site and let me know which ones look closes? Just quote me the code numbers if possible. I was hoping for a kitchen of some description as I prefer to prepare most of my meals. Not to say I won't be looking for a couple of extra different dining experiences in Boston.

Are you going to be around town whewn I'm there?

lagatta, I attended the first of the book-conferences in Cairns four years ago. As a result, I restructured the business I manage and established a marketing and distribution division to represent small U.S. and U.K medical publishers. We are now also positioned to move into print on demand publishing when the costs come down and the technology has evolved to produce bound books. We are in the final weeks of developing software that will be the most sophistocated retailing and management software in the industry and websites that are just waiting for the databases completion. That's why I've been eratic in postings here at slow travel.

We live in exciting times! As opposed to "interesting" times?