Boston

I'm in New York for a week, but took a weekend trip to Boston. I made our family go on "The Freedom Trail". I really only like visiting historic sites, so I'm trying to mix it up for the sake of the group as a whole, but The Freedom Trail is too good to pass up. It's a 2.5 mile walk through the city that leads you through most all of the Boston history there is to see. A painted red line on the sidewalk leads you past Paul Revere's house, Bunker Hill, the state capital building, the Old North Church, and a lot more.

If you follow the red line it makes it tough to miss most of the sites. In other cities its not usually that easy. I have some advice, though. Do your homework ahead of time. That's what I do. With the internet it's not that hard and really doesn't take very long. I would check out at least 3 or 4 websites. Trip Advisor is a good one, where average people critique places they have visited. Here are a couple of examples of things I had found out about ahead of time - one good and one bad.

The bar they used for the TV show Cheers is not on the Freedom Trail, but not far away from it. It was easy to get to and fun to see. There are no signs leading you to it, but you can find the info about it on-line.

Here is a negative example. This isn't first hand because I didn't even go to it, but that's because I didn't think it was worth going to. The Boston Tea Party was an important event. You might want to do see that if you were visiting Boston. Maybe if you were a kid, but otherwise, no. You have to pay to see a show in which they act out what happened. Then you lamely get to actually toss some tea overboard. But the "tea" looks like just some styrofoam thing attached to a rope that you toss in the water. Later they reel it back for the next customer. A bigger problem is where they do it is not even where it happened. They've reclaimed a lot of land from the bay in the centuries since. The location of the British ships back then is now like a parking lot or something.

Anyway, do your homework and you'll have a more enjoyable and cheaper trip.