4-day trip to boston in october - recommendations (Medford, Revere: where to stay, hotels)
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Hi! I'm back in Boston mode and this time want to take a trip there! Planning a trip with another friend; have never been to Boston and would LOVE to hear from anybody who can steer us in the right direction for where to stay where we can be very accessible to site-seeing (Freedom Trail, etc.). I'm completely in the dark as neither one of us have ever been to Boston. A hotel recommendation would be great ( I know they're expensive but something not outrageous) and any points of interest we should be sure to see - we will not have a car. Thank-you so much
For hotels, anywhere in the Back Bay, downtown, the financial district or even the seaport area would be good.
For things to do.....definitely walk the Freedom Trail. Check out the Institute of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Science Museum (if you go here, check out a movie in the Omni dome), the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
Since you're coming in October, you should see a Red Sox playoff game at Fenway Park :-)
There are a ton of places to eat, so you might want to check out a site like Yelp to get a sense of what you want and where you should go.
You can also go on a little cruise of the Boston Harbor (again, check for tickets beforehand, they might sell out if you just show up).
I'd recommend eating in the North End at least once. There is a lot of good Italian food there. You'll walk through if you do the Freedom Trail anyway.
For nightlife, there is a lot of things to do. If you want a little swank, go to the South End. If you want drunken tourists and suburbanites, go around Fanieul Hall. If you want to do some shopping and/or people watching, take a stroll down Newbury Street in the Back Bay.
What kind of things are you interested in? I'd highly recommend checking out the museums I mentioned. They are relatively inexpensive, so you should be able to go to all of them.
Oh yea, make sure to get a bowl of clam chowder, grab a lobster roll, and eat some freshly shucked oysters!
msantos1116: Thank you very much! The other gal and I both love history so really looking forward to this trip. Do you recommend the City View Trolley??
save money and look for a hotel as the Tara in Braintree which is near the T and they will drive you there! The Braintree Mall and they will drive you also is the other side of the street! You then may drive
to Cape Cod for a day which will take around 1 hour from Braintree. Frankly I do not believe in money
for the Boston hotels since parking etc all costs lots! Money saved will give you time to feel Boston
and the T. Cape Cod in the fall is the best time to visit! I did tell a friend about Braintree and he did stay there and at I do think motel 6 or such
near the T and was real happy since he was there to see New England.
You might want to book the "Old Town Trolley", that one is preferred for the hop on hop off tour that you'll experience & possibly the best one in the City these days:
You will save a LOT of $$$ booking your hotel closer to your dates via the site "Hotwire". You have no idea how worth it it'll be for you going this route. You just could get the "Intercontinental" Hotel in the Financial district down near the waterfront for $109 a night may be & here it is a 4 star hotel. Another hotel that you could possibly get is in the Back Bay and it's the Sheraton Hotel which would be awesome to stay at in the Fall because if you end up with rainy weather here at all, you'd just have to walk out and the Pru Shops and Copley Place are all indoors as soon as you walk out of the Sheraton Hotel lobby. There's many many possibilities via the Hotwire site. If you don't like to book that way because you don't know the hotel you'd be staying at, then what I suggest you do is go right to the "Trip Advisor" site, go to their Forum section under Boston and post your question about booking via "hotwire" and ask for the poster named "Will" on that post. He's got it down to a science as to which hotel is which and he will be able to assist you with where to stay and which hotel you'd be booking. He's absolutely awesome with knowing exactly which hotel it is that you're getting too, trust me. So remember this tip, as it's a good one for booking a hotel in downtown Boston. You will save $$$ like you wouldn't believe and you'll be right in downtown Boston at either the Back Bay or the Financial District or down by Faneuill Hall Marketplace. All locations are unbelievably great due to the fact that you'd be able to get around Boston regardless via the MBTA any way:
As an example, I booked via hotwire last summer because I wanted to see if I could get a deal down at the waterfront for a concert I was going to. Well didn't I get the fairly new Marriott Renaissance Hotel in the Seaport for $99 a night! Oh yes I did. I was thrilled! I couldn't believe that one. It worked out GREAT too, meeting my friends for dinner by walking out the door and around the corner to Salvatore's, it was awesome then just walking across the street to the Pavilion for the show, what a night that was! The room was gorgeous too! I thought there was going to be all kinds of hidden costs with it or something, but there wasn't, just the basic city tax stuff and that's it. I was in total shock checking in, I figured there was going to be WAY more charges, but there wasn't! It's well worth going the "hotwire" route if you're going to be staying in the City. In fact, it's worth every dime. Splurge on shopping and going out to dinner instead. I mean really, how often are you in your room, you know what I mean!
Speaking of going out to dinner, in the North End I highly recommend LaSumma on Fleet Street, right off of Hanover Street. Here's a Hidden Boston write up that you can read when you get the chance:
It's one of my favorite restaurants in the North End. They make their own pasta and what I like about this place is, there's no pretensious nonsense here. It's a gem and if you go here, let me know how you enjoyed it.
If you walk the Freedom Trail and go over the footbridge from the North End in to Charlestown for the USS Constitution, then you'll have to walk up to the Bunker Hill Monument too, remember to go to the Museum directly in front of the Monument, it's called the Bunker Hill Museum and it's located on the corner of Monument Avenue, you'll see it as you're strolling around the grounds of the Bunker Hill Monument. Well, go upstairs to the 2nd floor and walk to the back of the room, there's a miniature glass display case, GO there and chill out, you'll see the benches around it & hit the button to see history before your eyes explained to you in a fun way. You'll appreciate it once it's over and you'll be thanking me, honest! lol!
Afterwards, take a walk down Monument Avenue just to the left of the Museum, you can't miss it and then you can check out the beautiful brick homes along there. My grandfather lived along this street and so didn't my aunt and uncle for years, it's like a mini Beacon Hill thru this one square mile little neighborhood these days, big $$$ has been poured in to a lot of the townhomes. Continue down Monument Avenue till you get to the very end, turn right and walk along Warren Street, just a little way down it on the left you'll see the "Warren Tavern", it's located at 2 Pleasant Street. This is where you want to go for something to eat, it's awesome here, so remember it. It's also Massachusetts' oldest tavern, Paul Revere & George Washington had a few 'brewski's' here (years & years ago!) Here's info on it:
You can take the water taxi back to downtown Boston from the Marina that's located where the USS Constitution is OR you can walk back in to Boston, whatever you prefer. It's up to you. A lot of people by that time prefer to take the water taxi back, it's quicker! You can stroll thru the Marina and check out the waterfront and take your camera this day, there's a lot of good shots to take when you go to this area of the City.
Here's another good site that explains the water taxi routes and schedule. October will be a nice time of year to hop on one of these water taxis. You can take it from Logan and you can take it to get from one area of the City to another, like from Charlestown to Rowes Wharf etc...here's info on it:
If you don't want to go the "hotwire" route for your hotel in downtown Boston, then as Maggiekate suggested, staying right outside of Boston completely just might be your alternative to save some $$$. Another good place that you'd love to stay at is the "Hyatt Place" in Medford. They have a shuttle van that would pick you up at the airport & drop you off and also their shuttle van brings you right to the orange line MBTA subway (Wellington Station) OR even to Davis Square for the red line, you could visit Harvard Square & Mr. Bartley's Burgers and all that if you get the chance, so remember that!
It's ideal too because if you miss the shuttle van at all from your hotel then there's a bus stop right across the street from this Hyatt Place that stops at Wellington Station for downtown Boston. You'd like the rates at this hotel too a lot of people like to stay at this one, they have kitchenettes in their rooms and an indoor swimming pool here. You'd be taking the subway a lot so get a "Charlie card", get the 5 day pass. It's well worth it. Once you get to the subway get it right away to use it.
Have a wonderful time!
Last edited by CityGirl52; 08-07-2010 at 07:53 AM..
I'm in Boston (well, outside of it) right now, and I would recommend staying at a hotel where it's easy to get public transportation into Boston, if you're not staying in Boston itself. Parking is exorbitant. We are in a hotel in Milford. I don't recommend it.
This is my second time in Boston, and I wish I'd posted here asking for suggestions because we're not enjoying ourselves at all. Maybe it's just that I don't know where to go, but the major sight-seeing areas are over-run with tourists, who are so aggressive that it's just too stressful to really enjoy it. Prepare yourself for that.
The whale watching cruise was particularly bad. My two daughters got nearly trampled multiple times. Grown men were shoving them around to try and get pictures (of nothing because we didn't actually see any whales). When I asked one gentleman who pushed my seven-year-old aside so that he could get in front of her to please give her some space, he told me to "hold your tongue, woman." The people who worked on the cruise were incredibly inattentive, and so, it's no surprise that many adults were smoking on deck, when the cruise was supposed to be non-smoking.
I wish I'd known about eating in the North End, but we just didn't know where to go.
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It's well worth going the "hotwire" route if you're going to be staying in the City. In fact, it's worth every dime. Splurge on shopping and going out to dinner instead. I mean really, how often are you in your room, you know what I mean! 
