A day of Spring in Boston

The best thing about Boston is there are four seasons and each season has different things to enjoy. After the long, cold spring, the feeling about spring is spectacular. People are just enjoying being outside. Summertime, there are a lot of visitor from Europe, mainly students who enjoy their vacation here - this makes this area very European feeling, but not exactly. Fall, of course the foliage - best season of the year.

Quick Tips:

There is "CityPass" with which you can go in most of major sights in Boston such as Museum of Science, New England Aquarium, and skywalk observatory, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Harvard Museum of Natural History and John F. Kennedy Library and Museum. You save about half if you go to all of these attractions.

Best Way To Get Around:

Public transportation, especially the subway, is the easiest way to get around. You need to buy tokens for the ride. The stations on the ground, you cannot buy tokens, so it is better to buy extra when you can buy. There is a visitor pass as well.

We went there for lunch to enjoy the city view. Looking over the nice night view, enjoying band music is one thing; it is very entertaining for a daytime family activity when we have guests from different countries. It is lot more than a sightseeing tour, but a very sophisticated way to show the town. Price is a lot more generous for the lunch special, but you do not compromise the quality.

This place is not for enjoying sushi and sake. They do not even serve sake, but it's a very interesting place just the same. You can enjoy sushi as fast food. This place is located on Newberry St. so after you have enjoyed the shopping or walking around, just stop by there to have a quick bite of sushi, and you do not feel heavy after you eat. What is interesting is that other than focusing on skill, they focus on speed. They do not even put Wasabi in it, but just give you this on the side, which quickens the making process. Because the freshness is more important for sushi than anything else, this kind of place on a street like Newberry makes more sense.

Honestly I am not a donuts person. Until I came to Boston, I could not remember the last time I had donuts. I drank coffee occasionally, but I normally drank more tea. However, after I visited a Dunkin Donuts, I soon started going there for a couple cups of coffee.

My Old Italian friends took me there first. They were more desperate to find good coffee, and they were told Dunkin Donuts has some of the best, so they gave it try. Of course it is difficult to satisfy Italians for coffee. Well, they said it was OK, but this does not mean it is as good as coffee in Italy… but this is another story.

Anyway, this is how Dunkin Donuts started getting into my life. Dunkin Donuts is on every corner. I do have coffee now: hot, ice and gourmet. I enjoy donuts, especially bowtie and old fashion. Most of the places I use the restaurant for are drive through, but there is one in Harvard Square in Cambridge that is a very nice, café looking place.

There are 16 historical points for this trail. It starts from Boston Common, and very solid red line is drawn on the road, so you will not lose it.

When weather is good, this is one of my favorite streets. You can find stores like Burberry, Channel, Armani, etc. The street lies between T Arlington and T Hynes Convention, so just get off the subway and start walking.

The area is very entertaining and fun. Most of the stores are top brands, so it is too expensive to shop, but you can also find not-so-high brands like Gap, Nine West, and so forth, although I barely go inside them. It is not because I only buy stuff in expensive stores, but these stores you can find anywhere.

Because you are shopping on Newberry Street, it won't be too crowded. You shop without hassle, but I do not see many bargains. You would be better off to go the big mall or even outlets for stores like Gap and so forth. I'd rather go to the stores that I cannot find in the mall or anywhere else. Not only can you enjoy the luxury, but you can find quite nice stuff in there. One time I went to a Burberry store when they had a 30 to 40%-off sale, in which I found a very nice leather jacket at a very good price. If you do not find anything in your budget, just enjoy the street, people, and nice cafés.

This is the place that I would take most of my friends who are from out of town, or even from a different country. Especially winter time because it's nice and warm. It has all kind of nice, high brand stores such as Tiffany & Co., A|X Armani, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, as well as casual clothes such as Express, Banana Republic, JCrew and so on. There is also a movie theater, bookstore, cafe, and restaurant. Another big shopping complex called Prudential Mall is connected by tunnel.

When I think about tax in Massachusetts, this place is really worthwhile. There is no state sales tax in other parts of New England such as New Hampshire, but they do not have stores like this. If you are a big fan of high-end brands such as Tiffany & Co., A|X Armani, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, this is the place to go. The % of tax really maters when unit prices of your purchase are bigger.

You can get there by train from Prudential Station on Huntington Avenue (E train only). Copley Station on Boylston Street at Dartmouth Street. Hynes/ICA Station on Newbury Street at Mass Ave. Or you can drive, there is parking.

I usually take the train, since it is located in the center of Boston, so for lot of reasons it saves a lot of travel. Train runs often enough, and late enough till 1am. The only time I drove there was that when we went to the top of the hub, which is located one of the high floor in this building, since we had a baby and my father could not walk well.

This shopping center has a lot of stores like a lot of nice malls, but one of my favorites is Saks Fifth Avenue. I no longer need to go to NY for this. There are more restaurants inside, too. One time we invite people to Legal Seafood. They stayed in the Westin hotel. It is just great that we could go to the restaurant by walk inside, when it is freezing out. It is fun to look for non-famous, off the main street restaurants, but when you do not know the area that well and still want to do some Bostonian thing, Legal Seafood is the way to go.

I have not been to many science museums so I cannot compare this with others. However I can say I enjoy going there. There are a lot of educational displays and events. There is also a computers room where you and your kids can use the computers, I am not sure how extensively. There is a very nice, open cafeteria, as well as gift shops, which are fun to look around and, of course, to shop in.

One thing I like about this place is Omni Theater. This is a dome shaped, three-dimension theater. This itself is not very exciting technology anymore. It was about 15 years ago that 3-D first came out. Well, I enjoyed what they were showing in there anyway. They have a very interesting show list, most of them fall under the catagory of documentary, historical documentary and so on. Right now, the Lord of the Ring is on. My husband loves to go, but he is also afraid of being stranded by a lot of kids. I enjoy these show before that. They show the video of Boston. You are going to feel like you are in Helicopter or even flying like bird on the city of Boston. For the first time I got sick, like carsickness.