History, shopping, award-winning doughnuts and the sea! Boston is a fantastic destination for a short trip or longer family holiday, being that most fantastic – and unusual – of urban spaces, a city with access to beaches where skyscrapers and scenic coasts merge. Extend your stay to include a few days in Cape Cod, an easy train journey from the city to sand dunes, the place Bostonians get their seaside kicks
Take the Freedom Trail
Acquaint yourself with the city’s fascinating history – this is the place where the American Revolution really began. You’ll meet some of the key names of that auspicious period in US history on the Freedom Trail, a walking tour of 15 historic city landmarks that you can follow by yourself or with a guide. ($14/$8). Learn about Paul Revere’s famous ride on that fateful night when the British troops were dispensed to stem the rebellion. Meet John Hancock, who gave his name to Boston’s highest building. Visit the grave of Samuel Adams, a signatory of the Declaration of Independence and one of Boston’s great revolutionaries.
We signed up for the guided tour and gathered on Boston Common outside the Information Centre to find our guide in full revolutionary-era costume – no joke in temperatures of over 30-degrees. He was playing the part of John Singleton Copley, whose father-in-law was the unfortunate owner of the tea which ended up in Boston harbour, during the infamous ‘tea party’ that was the instigator of the whole revolution. Copley escaped the revolutionary unrest by moving to the UK and wound up his days in Croydon, South London, where he is now buried. Less than two miles away from my own flat it turns out.
Visit the Boston Tea Party Museum
You can learn more about the events of that famous tea party in a re-enactment of the entire event at the Boston Tea Party Museum ($29.95/$18) – you even get to walk out on the re-created vessel itself, moored on the Charles river in its original position, where you can throw some tea overboard! Afterwards you can drink a selection of that fateful tea in the tea room and pick up a tea party souvenir mug.
Eat in America’s oldest restaurant
As well as visiting his grave, you can also drink Samuel Adams beer in every bar, including Boston’s oldest restaurant, Union Oyster House. In fact, not only is it the oldest restaurant in Boston, it’s also the oldest restaurant in continuous service in the USA – serving drinkers and diners since 1826. Located in a prime location near Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall, it’s a friendly buzzy place and very popular. You might have to wait for a while for a table or you could squeeze in to eat at the bar. Great for lobster rolls and crab cakes.
Go to the top of the city’s second-highest building
While you can admire the soaring glass frontage of the aforementioned 60-storey Hancock Tower, Boston and New England’s tallest building, its observation deck has been closed since the attack on the Twin Towers. Opt for the city’s second tallest tower instead, the 52-floor Prudential Building ($20/$14). Zipping quickly to the top in a high-speed lift, we enjoyed amazing views of a beautiful city sunset and also the history of its immigrants in an exhibition that tells us, here, all are welcome. It’s a poignant admission in the middle of very public rages about walls and Mexicans, Muslims and travel bans and reminder of the people throughout history who travelled from all over the world to make America great.
Visit the John F Kennedy Library
It’s hard to walk around Boston and not be reminded of its immigrants. We get a detailed look into the lives of one of them when we take the Paul Revere transportation company shuttle bus from the JFK/UMass T subway station to the JFK Library on the edge of the bay at Columbia Point ($14/$10). The story told here through live footage, newspaper clippings, and photographs of the political rise of the 35th President of the United States is both powerful and moving. And his story started back in Ireland, when both his maternal and paternal great-grandparents left the famine-stricken country in the early 1800s.
Go to Harvard
Not all immigrants who came to Boston were penniless. You may not realise when you go to Cambridge – a great place to spend a leisurely day around the green squares and red-bricked buildings of Harvard university – that John Harvard was a Puritan from London. He came to the US in 1637 and willed his both his extensive book collection and his fortune to the university, which thoughtfully named the prestigious college after him. Interesting to note then that the fortune was made by selling his mother’s alehouse in London’s notorious Southwark area. Making it a rather unlikely beginning for the Puritan foundation of one of the most famous centres of learning in the world.
Eat all-American
But no matter how many reminders we see of England and Ireland in Boston, once we hit the restaurants, bars and diners of New England, we are big time all American. You know you’re in the US when you find yourself eating a very large burger served with fried banana, peanut butter, cinnamon and bacon. (Boston Burger Company, Cambridge). We eat breakfast in diners that are happily serving cocktails before 10am, making our tasty (food!) choices from a menu that is veering towards the length of War and Peace and includes bacon sandwich doughnuts and spicy Mexican beans (The Friendly Toast, Back Bay, pictured).
Discover seafood
Don’t leave Boston without trying the seafood, particularly its famous lobster roll. The Barking Crab, overlooking the Charles River, is one of the best spots to indulge – a local seafood institution, loud, raucous and partly open to the elements, with timber benches and bar stools overlooking the glittering lights of the skyscrapers of the financial district just opposite.
Sample the best doughnuts in the country
Early one morning we joined a queue snaking around the outside of Kane’s on Oliver St and found, when we got to the counter, that its doughnuts have been ranked in the Top 10 Doughnuts of America. Get there early if you want to try them as they regularly sell out by lunchtime. I chose a glazed swirled cinnamon creation as big as my head and we took our sweet treasures to the nearby Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, the pretty park near the river that was formerly a highway. It’s another nod to Boston’s famous ‘immigrants’, the Kennedy matriarch, who gave birth to nine children, including one US president and two senators, and lived to be 105.
Do Italian
Another must-eat while in the city is the tasty and very authentic Italian food in the North End – Regina Pizzeria is one of the best. For dessert, try the Sicilian cannoli pastries from arch rivals Mike’s and Modern Pastry on Hanover St to see if you can pick a favourite. For upmarket Italian – starched tablecloths, gleaming silverware, amazingly affordable prices – try Venezia in its stunning location along Boston Harbour, looking out over the water to the city skyscrapers.
Lunch at a food market
Quincy Market is where all the tourists head but we followed the locals’ tip to lunch at the Boston Public Market with its rows of fresh food stalls – great for seafood and organic salads.
Go 5-star
For accommodation go central and treat yourself to 5-star. The Boston Park Plaza has a fashionable city centre location in the buzzy Back Bay area, reclaimed from the sea in the 19th century. Right in the heart of the city, it’s a historic building brought bang up to date with a recent $100 million makeover (rooms from $229). A swish marbled lobby leads to an elegant lounge and dining area, with a glamorous Art Deco bar to the rear – or you can chill out in the library. Rooms are spacious, comfortable and well fitted out. And what a location – the brownstone-lined Newbury and Boylston shopping streets are just a short five-minute walk.
Another great option is the Langham Hotel, right in the middle of Boston’s business streets and a throwback to its financial history – it’s the former Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, given a very plush makeover (rooms with 2 double beds from $359). Providing a very stylish welcome for guests since the mid 1800s, the interiors are rich and opulent, with the open plan lobby bar the perfect place to sit and relax with a glass of Champagne. While the area is quiet in the evening and at weekends when the banker go home, it’s just a short walk from here to Boston Common, Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market.
Shop
If you’re staying in the Plaza, you’re right on the edge of stylish shopping away from the downtown crowds at nearby Newbury and Boylston streets with their beautiful Victorian brownstone buildings. Downtown city malls are located at the Prudential Centre and Copley Place; just outside on Copley Square, you’ll find a farmers’ market on Fridays. Here also you’ll find Boston Public Library, with its tucked-away courtyard café, a hidden gem in the city. And, a plus for UK visitors, tax-free shopping is available on clothes and shoes under $175 made in a single purchase.
Bag a bargain
Bargain hunters should head for Nordstrom Rack on Boylston St for knock-down designer finds, while bargain outlets at Assembly Row are located just 10 minutes on the T from downtown Boston. Or you could travel further out to Wrentham Premium Outlets, a 50-minute drive from the city – take the bus or hire a car. Great for families and children’s shops, Natick Mall is just 30 minutes from Boston and has over 250 stores.
Keep it in mind for Christmas
Boston is a great place to go Christmas shopping, less crowded than its busier New York neighbour and easy to get around on foot in the compact city centre or on the city’s fast and efficient T subway system.
America As You Like It is offering a 3-night Boston Christmas shopping package from £535 per person including direct return flights from London Heathrow to Boston on Delta Airlines, 3 nights at the Omni Parker House in a double room and 1-day car hire, valid for travel 7-10 December 2018. For more information contact 020 8742 8299 or visit Americaasyoulikeit.com. Keep up to date with the latest offers for Christmas in Boston at Massholiday.co.uk.
Take in a game
Go native at Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox baseball team and enjoy the entertainment in the crowd – dancing, waving, performing to the cameras that beam pictures of the crowd onto a huge on-pitch screen – as well as what’s happening on the field.
Breathe the sea air
Castle Island is a wonderful amenity on the edge of the city, with its walks by the bay overlooking Boston Harbour. Once an island, it was connected to the mainland by a narrow strip of land in the 1920s. It is now a 22-acre recreation site and has also been the site of a fortification since 1634 – Fort Independence.
Share your stories with the locals
Boston is that sort of place, a city that is smaller, cosier and more intimate than you might have expected, where people chat to you on the subway and in restaurants. Everywhere we went we were met with great welcome. While the US’s perception abroad is going through a difficult time, the people there are friendly, open, curious, delighted to talk, to learn about our lives and to swap stories about their own. Americans have faced tough times on their journey to independence and I’m sure there are tough times ahead. But I really hope that despite all of their difficulties, the people can manage to retain the welcoming openness and friendliness that we experienced everywhere on our trip.
Read more about Boston in Why we should all visit America right now
Add a trip to Cape Cod to your holiday: see 10 things to do in Cape Cod
Read my travel feature on Boston and Cape Cod published in The Scotsman
Photos: Boston main shot and Boston Tea Party Museum by Kyle Klein
It feels strange to be writing about the US from here as Donald Trump touches down across the sea in the UK to protests, howls of rage and ridicule. (In the interests of fairness I must add that there are presumably people in the UK who think his visit is a good thing and support it. Farage and Johnson come to mind. Enough said.)
The image of that Trump balloon baby floating over Westminster will surely become one of the most surreal iconic images of our times. And what strange times they are.
America once took in the poor, the hungry and the downtrodden of the world. It gave them shelter, allowed them to work and to feed and clothe themselves, it gave them the chance to live. Some built roads and skyscrapers, some built empires, all built livelihoods that not only gave them better lives but often the only chance they had at life itself. From the famine fields of Ireland and the ghettos of Europe they came, and they made their contribution to America.
Now the poor, the hungry and the downtrodden are being housed in cages and subjected to genocide. (The UN’s definition of genocide under the statutes of the International Criminal Court includes the measure ‘forcibly transferring the children of the group to another group’).
I’m writing this on a bus from Falmouth to Hyannis in Cape Cod. The bus is like what I imagine a bus in 1950’s Ireland to be like – full of characters, banter and good humour. The driver knows most of the passengers, most of whom also know each other, and stories are being swapped as each one boards.
It’s exact fares only on this bus and, rather than take our big notes for which he couldn’t give us any change, the driver just took what dollars we could scrabble together. He wouldn’t even take my quarter coins which would have made up an extra dollar – telling me to give them to my friends as souvenirs when I went home instead.
The openness, friendliness and interest in other people is what have struck me the most about all of the Americans I have met as I’ve travelled around this little part of New England. From Boston to Cape Cod to Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, everywhere I’ve gone, I’ve met the same reaction. People here want to know where you’re from and are interested to hear your story. And whether they’re familiar with your culture or not, they are always complimentary.
Americans are living under one of the most divisive, unstable and – seen through the eyes of the world – unpopular regimes in history. Despite this they remain friendly, open and welcoming. It’s a good time to visit. To support their tourist economy that puts money in the pockets of ordinary people, to see their monuments, to understand their history.
Boston is a great place to start, to explore the events that led up to the American Revolution and the push for independence. From the city’s great Freedom Trail – which you can follow by yourself or take a guided tour – to the Boston Tea Party Museum – where you’ll get a chance to heave a tea crate over the edge of a ship – the city’s history is written in every twist and turn of its streets. Follow the tales of the founding fathers of independence, including Samuel Adams and Paul Revere, to the stories of more recent ‘immigrants’, such as John F Kennedy. His great-grandparents emigrated from Ireland in the 1800s to found this American dynasty and give the US one of its most charismatic presidents; a man who believed in equal rights for all Americans, whatever their race, colour or creed.
A Nation of Immigrants by John F Kennedy was published after his assassination in 1963. In it he writes about the 42 million people who have immigrated to the US since the arrival of the British in 1607 – the largest migration of people in all recorded history.
He says that ‘Immigration policy should be generous; it should be fair; it should be flexible. With such a policy we can turn to the world, and to our own past, with clean hands and a clear conscience’. And he quotes George Washington who said ‘The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent and respectable stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all nations and religions’.
We visited the JFK Library in Boston and the smaller, more intimate JFK Museum in Hyannis on Cape Cod, with its collection of rare, archival family photos. Afterwards we made our way along the beach to where the Kennedy Compound can be seen looking out to sea, the sea that so many immigrants crossed on their way to find a better life.
Colonisation and immigration are two very different sides of the same story and America has had its fair share of both. While much is said of the British settlers who came in the 1600s and who finally gained independence from their rulers back at home, the stories of the native Americans their arrival displaced are not as widely told. Down the road from the statue of JFK in Hyannis, there’s a statue of the native American Iyannough, who gave Hyannis his name.
Americans have faced tough times on their journey to independence and I’m sure there are tough times ahead. But I really hope that despite all of their difficulties, the people can manage to retain the welcoming openness and friendliness that I’ve experienced everywhere this week.
Visit the US: 18 top things to do in Boston