Even in Dreary Weather, Boston Revolutionizes the Couples’ Weekend
By Scott Pruden
Fall 2007
Somewhere, amidst the driving rain, the mist and what the locals hope will be the last spring chill, is a side of Boston that caters to lovers of both history and each other.
It’s just a little hard to see it past all the umbrellas right now.
In one of those freak fluctuations of New England weather, the 80-degrees-and-sunny weather appropriate for late May has decided to indulge in a little time travel, casting back to the dreary, wet days of late March.
That hasn’t stopped everyday Bostonians from going about their daily business and hasn’t even begun to stop the swarms of tourists and students – many leading parents in town for the various graduations that are looming – from getting out and paying homage to the nation’s founders at the various shrines, memorials and historic sites.
It’s late, though, and my stomach signals that it needs attention, so I hop a cab to the Back Bay section of town and Boston’s version of The Palm restaurant, located in the Westin at Copley Place. My spirits are immediately improved by the arrival of a key lime martini – a creamy, tart concoction that brings to mind tropical sunsets and warm sand rather than the dreary weather lingering outside the dining room’s glass wall.
With a customer base that includes captains of industry and rock stars, it’s safe to assume that the guy in the nylon track suit at the next table might be either a local heavyweight or a well-known music mogul, with no clue his neighbor in the suit and tie is just a humble scribbler.
The family history of impeccable service emphasized in all the Palm restaurants means the friendly and helpful staff here treats everyone with the same high regard. With reservations I pass on the two-pound Nova Scotia lobster in favor of the Fillet Oscar special, a perfectly seared nine-ounce filet mignon served with tender, buttery crab meat. After it arrives, my server, Travis, even takes a moment from his busy shift to suggest a few after-hours spots to hit during my stay.
One of his personal favorites – due in no small part to his friendship with the owner – is City Bar, a leather upholstered haven for both the after-work and late-night crowd tucked into the Lenox Hotel at the corner of Exeter and Boylston streets. His preference might also have to do with the exceptionally attractive wait staff and Chef Robert Fathman’s cocktails. Try the Dark and Stormy – Gosling’s Black Seal rum mixed with A.J. Stephens ginger beer – or the locally famous selection of infused liquors, listed on the bar menu as “Infusions Diabolique.” The Infusion Diabolique Rum, flavored with lemon, orange and ginger – will no doubt put you in a sunnier and more amorous frame of mind.
And since being around beautiful people can by extension make you feel like one of them, the see-and-be-seen vibe makes it perfect for couples looking to spark a little interest once they return to their hotel rooms.
At Nine Zero, the most chic of Boston’s boutique hotels, the return is made even more pleasant by the romantic accommodations the staff is happy to make. The entire hotel prides itself on its emphasis on impeccable design and low-key elegance, and the rooms reflect that. Headboards are upholstered in rich leather and earth-tone colors that reflect ambiance of serenity and romance.
The in-room martini bar, complete with mixers, glass rimmers, a cocktail shaker and an ice-bucket filled at turndown, can easily be the romantic deal-closer after your evening of rubbing shoulders with Boston’s movers and shakers.
The next morning, with the slate gray sky still overhead and the upper floors of this historic city’s mid-rise towers shrouded in low-hanging clouds, it would be all to easy to decide to crawl right back into Nine Zero’s exceptionally comfortable bed.
It’s a tempting option – forsake the founding fathers, turn on some movies, order room service and raid the mini-bar. Meanwhile you let the rain fall while you forget whatever trials and tribulations you left at home.
But down across Beacon Street in one of the city’s oldest burial yards (don’t call them cemeteries, because the cloth-wrapped bodies were stacked one on top of the other back in the day), the earthly remains of many of our nation’s founders lie beneath the damp earth and the dripping wet headstones. It’s this side of Boston that beckons in spite of the inclement weather, and if nothing else the lingering chill and damp will encourage your partner in exploration to snuggle in a little closer.
On a normal day the Granary Burial Ground on Tremont Street, where you’ll find the grave sites of Revolutionary heroes like Paul Revere and John Hancock, would be swarmed with tourists and schoolchildren to the point where the departed founding fathers might feel the earth rumble above them. Today, though, the tours seem thinner as professional photographer Saba Alhadi, author of Boston in Photographs, leads us through the headstones delighting in the texture and detail the rain has revealed on the wet markers.
Her Photo Tours of Boston follow several different routes – ours this morning departed from the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial across from the gold-domed State House and followed the Freedom Trail – and in each one she helps shutterbugs see Boston with the eye of a photographer rather than just a tourist.
While the Freedom Trail is one of those “must-do” items on the agenda of any Boston visitor, it’s refreshing to get the requisite dose of history combined with unexpected professional expertise and without the occasionally hokey re-enactor dressed in authentic Colonial garb. It turns out Alhadi is knowledgeable about her history and her photography, and points out a number of interesting angles to take advantage of glistening stone and water dripping from the hand of a child on the Irish Immigrant Memorial in the center of the city’s Downtown Crossing section.
On the way, we stop to step out of the drizzle and increasingly gusty wind to admire the lobby of the Boston Omni Parker House, the oldest continuously operating hotel in the U.S. Members of our humble group rub their hands together for warmth while admiring the mid-19th century architectural details and the cavernous main lobby.
It’s this same building that has hosted great writers and thinkers like Charles Dickens and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, politicians and presidents going back to Ulysses S. Grant and up to Bill Clinton, one presidential assassin – John Wilkes Booth – as well as employed in its kitchen a couple of revolutionaries – eventual Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh as a baker and Malcolm Little, later to become black activist Malcolm X, as a busboy.
The name Kennedy has also become synonymous with the Parker House, with John F. Kennedy a regular presence from childhood through the bachelor party that preceded his marriage to Jacqueline Bouvier.
It’s tempting to abandon the tour here and poke around, especially since there’s more modern history to be found at every turn. But our extremities warmed and our photos taken, we move on.
The Downtown Crossing section of Boston can be almost overwhelming in its history – it’s impossible to turn a corner or take a step without treading on some spot significant to the birth of the United States.
I leave the tour at Quincy Market, built in 1826 to expand the capacity of Faneuil Hall, built in 1742 to serve as a public market and indoor public square for Bostonians to sell their wares and spout off publicly even in the coldest of New England winters. After years of disrepair in the mid-20th century, the market was rehabbed and converted into more of a central shopping mall.
What the area would offer on a nicer day – scads of free outdoor entertainment in the form of street performers and people watching, along with outdoor dining at a number of restaurants – is woefully absent in the cold and wet today. Under more pleasant conditions it would be an ideal spot to just camp for lunch and watch the sites or pick up a gourmet picnic and push on to nearby Waterfront Park, which offers stunning views across Boston Harbor and easy access to the New England Aquarium and the rest of the harbor waterfront.
North from Waterfront Park is North End Park, which adjoins Copps Hill Burial Ground and the Old North Church, from where Paul Revere was signaled on the night of his historic ride.
The city’s compact size and extensive parks, many of which serve as jewels in urban planner Frederick Law Olmsted’s “Emerald Necklace,” a chain of parks and public spaces that include Boston Common and the Public Garden at its center and various other open spaces interspersed along the waterfront and central portions of the city make it easy to spend several days here just strolling.
Though not part of the original Emerald Necklace, the Charles River Esplanade now serves as yet another one of Boston’s premiere public spaces, running along the Boston side of river from just across from the dam at the Museum of Science at Monsignor O’Brien Highway west for nearly 17 miles. For Boston residents, it serves very much as the city’s back yard, offering views of rowing and sailing on the river, paths for biking, in-line skating and jogging and the Hatch Shell, a public outdoor performance space that serves as the centerpiece for the city’s annual Independence Day celebration.
The park can also serve as the perfect launching point for an exploration of two of Boston’s most interesting neighborhoods, Beacon Hill and Back Bay.
Your first steps into Beacon Hill might prompt a gasp just from the sheer urban beauty of it all. Tall, narrow brick townhouses line the wide boulevards for miles, and many of the side streets still feature cobblestones left over from the horse-and-buggy days. To get an idea of the opulence in which Beacon Hill residents once lived, stop by the Otis House Museum, former home of Harrison Gray Otis, the colonial developer who helped create the neighborhood itself.
But, as with most couples, there might come a time when you either choose to part ways for a while or compromise on an activity that might fall more into your companion’s area of interest. That’s when it’s time to head to Back Bay, home of Boston’s most exclusive shopping, most prestigious museums and its long-suffering baseball team.
Locals describe Newbury Street to outsiders as the “Rodeo Drive of Boston,” and indeed it does share a healthy dose of ultra-luxurious retailers at which most of us could only window shop. At the same time, though, I’m easily reminded of how small Boston can be sometimes when I spot a preppie 20-something couple in an Audi SUV blocking traffic at the corner of Arlington and Newbury talking to an older woman walking her Jack Russell terrier in front of the Burberry store.
A local suggested I take note of the progression of stores as one heads west on Newbury, how the level of prestige eases downward from high-end to mid-market. But what really strikes me is how the street goes from the near absolute exclusivity – those stores that seem like they might very well require a credit check before you can enter – to more neighborhood-oriented businesses. Five blocks down, the neighborhood has become homier, with hardware stores, pizza shops and less chi-chi cafes tucked into the gorgeous brick row homes.
Dining along Newbury runs the gamut, as well. Expect to pay for the experience at Bouchée Urban Brasserie a few blocks into the more elegant stretch, where you’ll pay $18 for steamed mussels and pommes frites with warm aïoili. Two blocks away, tuck in at Joe’s American Bar & Grill for a half-pound cheddar cheeseburger – with hand-cut fries and homemade onion rings on the side – for $8.99. Two more blocks take you to the door of DeLuca’s Market, boasting its overstuffed sandwich for $5.99.
Many spots also offer extensive outdoor seating, the better to people watch and be watched. Given the persistent precipitation, few restaurants have even put their tables out and those that have don’t have many takers.
For a more cultural spin on things, I head to the Museum of Fine Arts after lunch only to find the much heralded Edward Hopper exhibit has just sold out. Not discouraged, I press on and investigate the art and culture of everything from the ancient Etruscans to modern warfare, spending a good portion of the afternoon there without even making it to the second level.
For a multi-museum afternoon, splitting the Museum of Fine Arts with its smaller counterpart, the Isabelle Stewart Gardener Museum is an excellent option. Gardener, a mid-19th century progressive, spent scads of her own money compiling a staggering collection of art in her newly built Venetian palazzo. The entire home is now a museum dedicated to displaying her diverse collection.
And perhaps best of all, the museum features a lovely café that features outdoor seating and is one of the loveliest spots in the city for an afternoon dessert or drink. But watch your time – the café closes at 4 p.m.
While shopping and museum hopping might have satisfied the gentler half of your couple, those carrying a Y chromosome might also be interested in Fenway Park, the temple to the Red Sox. And while stadium tours – not to mention regular old stadium seats – are readily available on most days, the neighborhood itself holds some attractions not completely tied to baseball.
For instance, the TOMB interactive archaeology adventure, presented by 5W!TS (as in the five wits of Renaissance literature: common sense, imagination, fantasy, estimation and memory) will not only give you and your companion a little taste of interactive, Indiana Jones-style action, but it might very well test your compatibility as a couple.
The scene is this: You and your party – referred to as “volunteer archaeologists” – have been chosen to discover the fate of a professor who disappeared inside the recently discovered tomb of a powerful pharaoh. Once you are led inside by your guide, the spirit of the long-dead pharaoh issues a challenge to solve his riddles, lest you face the same fate as the professor, whose skeleton you pass on the way in.
What follows is a series of puzzles that can challenge kids and adults alike and forces even recently introduced strangers to work together as a team. Those who “die” are sent out of the attraction early through a side exit. Those who pass are rewarded by seeing the pharaoh finally laid to rest.
Skip breakfast and arrive early enough to beat the crowds of school children that mob the place during the school year – the 5W!TS folks keep a selection of coffees and baked goods on hand.
Afterwards, your hunger stimulated by solving metaphysical riddles and calming the souls of ancient Egypt, travel a few blocks up Brookline Avenue to the flagship location of Boston Beer Works, where for 11 years the staff has been cranking out tasty craft-brewed beers (16 on tap and counting), as well as hearty new American cuisine and a relaxed atmosphere that’s sports-fan friendly but not sports bar obnoxious. Sadly, I was too early to taste the summer-only Watermelon Ale, but my light-to-dark sampler was an excellent survey of Beer Works’ offerings and a fine way to toast this historic and welcoming city that, even in the chilly rain, has enough spark to make love burn hot. 
