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My sister and I took our 3rd "sister trip". This was an idea we had a few years back, to go someplace every year to get away from the kids around mother's day. we went to denver, then after covid it was Austin. This year I picked boston because it's listed as a good place for public transportation, and jetblue flies out of KC for pretty cheap. hotels were very expensive but I used points for half our trip to alleviate that some.
first I asked chat GPT what we should do and got some ideas, it'll give you an itinerary for a three day trip. I asked some friends to help supplement.
day 1 - arrived around 5pm. We were staying at the airport hyatt because it was close to the logan airport, I figured it'd be easy to get to subways. it was not! there was an airport bus that'd pick you up sometimes and take you ALL AROUND EVERY TERMINAL before you got to the subway station and that sucked. the hotel had a shuttle driver you could use, we'd tip him $5 and he was sometimes out on a run. but it was definitely not a "jump out and you're in the world" kind of situation. the ferry from there cost $9 to get across the water but only went a couple times a day, there's a "water taxi" for $15. we were just far from everything. but we had a nice evening at a restaurant by the harbor, suffered terrible service but eventually ate our first lobster rolls and walked around downtown.
day 2 - Faneuil Hall, even better lobster rolls for lunch at the Bell In Hand Tavern near the boston public market, walked to south boston for a tour of the boston children's museum since my sister is in the industry. we hit up the boston contemporary museum of art. it has a great gift shop but it's an oddly huge building with only one floor of a few small exhibits, I though the ticket was too expensive for just a few rooms. we left and got the last sam adams brewery tour. sam adams makes most of their beer elsewhere now so this operation is small and historical, there was a fantastic tour guide who was engaging and entertaining and the highlight of the visit, because there's not much there, no bottling facilities which are always my favorite thing to see on a brewery tour. We were in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood and there was an Ethiopian Cafe - something we love but don't have in our home towns, there's no ethiopian restaurants in wichita or topeka which is sad because it's SO GOOD and this place was amazing!
day 3 - we split up, we always like to have an afternoon to go our separate ways. she gets a spa appointment. I went to the bunker hill monument - which was a hell of a walk from a subway station and uphill. We ended up getting like 20,000 steps a day on this trip. Then I walked down to the USS constitution which was REALLY cool. I went through it too fast to catch a ferry back to downtown boston for lunch. the ferry from there was $4 and had a rooftop deck, it was my favorite boat by far. once downtown I went back to the public market area for lunch and had clam chowder at an irish pub. I'd wanted it the whole time but my sister is lactose intolerant so I didn't want to flaunt it with her too much. then we met up at the harvard art museums because they were having a free day. harvard was quite a campus but it's so full of tourists, I can't imagine going to school there. I wasn't allowed in the library, tourists aren't allowed to just check out harvard buildings, that's okay I understand. but the museum was such an impressive collection. we went to Newberry Street for a trendy dinner, then to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts because they were advertising Adult Lego Night. It was $27 and lego night was a bust - a huge line to sit at a table for five minutes, build a small guided lego ocean wave, and move on. I thought it'd be a chance to sit around and just play with lego. We checked out the museum collections instead and that was definitely worth it because again, it was a huge collection I could have spent a day with.
that's the museum mystery I have from boston - how could the contemporary museum just be a few rooms, when there's the harvard and fine arts museums in town that are 10x the size charging just a little more admission?
boston advice: research museum free days. we really lucked out with that harvard thing.
day 4: we love science so we went to the boston science museums and watched a planetarium show about going to mars. honestly, we were trying to get out of the way a bit, stop just walking streets and stay in the same building for a few hours to relax. it was a good choice. we returned to back bay/newberry street for dinner at an italian sidewalk cafe. went to boston common park and saw a million prom kids all dressed up having photos, then called our parents from outside the cheers bar so they could facetime and see where we were but we felt no need to go into cheers for a drink, it's tiny and loud. instead I googled some facebook events and found this place lily's that had a karaoke night on fridays and that was an absolute blast, mostly women in a bar singing 90s songs and I got a few turns. we bought a drink for the best singer and she was so appreciative, my sister says women don't buy each other drinks often enough.
got back to kc on jetblue the next day.
this is definitely one of the best cities i've been to! the locals complain about the traffic and random subways going out of service, but we got where we needed to. my sister did try to take a lyft to meet me at harvard after our split up day, it was slower than my subway journeys, she was stuck for an hour! so don't drive, don't park, just stay close and have good walking shoes.
first I asked chat GPT what we should do and got some ideas, it'll give you an itinerary for a three day trip. I asked some friends to help supplement.
day 1 - arrived around 5pm. We were staying at the airport hyatt because it was close to the logan airport, I figured it'd be easy to get to subways. it was not! there was an airport bus that'd pick you up sometimes and take you ALL AROUND EVERY TERMINAL before you got to the subway station and that sucked. the hotel had a shuttle driver you could use, we'd tip him $5 and he was sometimes out on a run. but it was definitely not a "jump out and you're in the world" kind of situation. the ferry from there cost $9 to get across the water but only went a couple times a day, there's a "water taxi" for $15. we were just far from everything. but we had a nice evening at a restaurant by the harbor, suffered terrible service but eventually ate our first lobster rolls and walked around downtown.
day 2 - Faneuil Hall, even better lobster rolls for lunch at the Bell In Hand Tavern near the boston public market, walked to south boston for a tour of the boston children's museum since my sister is in the industry. we hit up the boston contemporary museum of art. it has a great gift shop but it's an oddly huge building with only one floor of a few small exhibits, I though the ticket was too expensive for just a few rooms. we left and got the last sam adams brewery tour. sam adams makes most of their beer elsewhere now so this operation is small and historical, there was a fantastic tour guide who was engaging and entertaining and the highlight of the visit, because there's not much there, no bottling facilities which are always my favorite thing to see on a brewery tour. We were in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood and there was an Ethiopian Cafe - something we love but don't have in our home towns, there's no ethiopian restaurants in wichita or topeka which is sad because it's SO GOOD and this place was amazing!
day 3 - we split up, we always like to have an afternoon to go our separate ways. she gets a spa appointment. I went to the bunker hill monument - which was a hell of a walk from a subway station and uphill. We ended up getting like 20,000 steps a day on this trip. Then I walked down to the USS constitution which was REALLY cool. I went through it too fast to catch a ferry back to downtown boston for lunch. the ferry from there was $4 and had a rooftop deck, it was my favorite boat by far. once downtown I went back to the public market area for lunch and had clam chowder at an irish pub. I'd wanted it the whole time but my sister is lactose intolerant so I didn't want to flaunt it with her too much. then we met up at the harvard art museums because they were having a free day. harvard was quite a campus but it's so full of tourists, I can't imagine going to school there. I wasn't allowed in the library, tourists aren't allowed to just check out harvard buildings, that's okay I understand. but the museum was such an impressive collection. we went to Newberry Street for a trendy dinner, then to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts because they were advertising Adult Lego Night. It was $27 and lego night was a bust - a huge line to sit at a table for five minutes, build a small guided lego ocean wave, and move on. I thought it'd be a chance to sit around and just play with lego. We checked out the museum collections instead and that was definitely worth it because again, it was a huge collection I could have spent a day with.
that's the museum mystery I have from boston - how could the contemporary museum just be a few rooms, when there's the harvard and fine arts museums in town that are 10x the size charging just a little more admission?
boston advice: research museum free days. we really lucked out with that harvard thing.
day 4: we love science so we went to the boston science museums and watched a planetarium show about going to mars. honestly, we were trying to get out of the way a bit, stop just walking streets and stay in the same building for a few hours to relax. it was a good choice. we returned to back bay/newberry street for dinner at an italian sidewalk cafe. went to boston common park and saw a million prom kids all dressed up having photos, then called our parents from outside the cheers bar so they could facetime and see where we were but we felt no need to go into cheers for a drink, it's tiny and loud. instead I googled some facebook events and found this place lily's that had a karaoke night on fridays and that was an absolute blast, mostly women in a bar singing 90s songs and I got a few turns. we bought a drink for the best singer and she was so appreciative, my sister says women don't buy each other drinks often enough.
got back to kc on jetblue the next day.
this is definitely one of the best cities i've been to! the locals complain about the traffic and random subways going out of service, but we got where we needed to. my sister did try to take a lyft to meet me at harvard after our split up day, it was slower than my subway journeys, she was stuck for an hour! so don't drive, don't park, just stay close and have good walking shoes.
