New England
Combine a stay in buzzing Boston with visits to well-heeled Cape Cod for a memorable taste of New England, writes Bernadette Fallon
A trip to Boston and the beaches of Cape Cod
We went completely native at Fenway Park, cheering on the Red Sox to victory
There’s a whole lot of history in Boston, where tiny taverns and colonial buildings sit side by side with gleaming skyscrapers and glass towers. The city’s founding fathers, Paul Revere, John Hancock and Samuel Adams, were the forerunners of the American Revolution and the instigators of the Boston Tea Party that pretty much kicked it all off.
You can relive the events of that famous shindig at the Boston Tea Party Museum ($29.95/$18) and you’ll also meet the lads on the city’s famous Freedom Trail – a walking tour of 15 historic city landmarks that you can follow by yourself or with a guide. ($14/$8).
Dressed in full revolutionary-era costume – no joke in temperatures of over 30-degrees – our guide plays the part of John Singleton Copley, whose father-in-law was the unfortunate owner of the tea that ended up in the harbour. Copley moved to the UK to escape the unrest 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.
Boston is that sort of place, a place of connections and local colour that is smaller, cosier and more intimate than you expect. Where people chat to you on the subway and in restaurants. And where the history comes alive on the streets. You can drink Samuel Adams beer in every bar, including America’s oldest restaurant, Union Oyster House, travel on the Paul Revere shuttle buses and admire the soaring 60-storey Hancock Tower, Boston’s tallest building.
But its observation deck has been closed since the attack on the Twin Towers so on the night we arrive, we make our way to the top of the city’s second tallest tower, the 52-floor Prudential Building ($20/$14). We get 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 public rages about walls and Mexicans, Muslims and travel bans. But you can’t walk around Boston and not be reminded of its immigrants. We get a detailed look into the life of one of them the next day, when we take the Paul Revere shuttle bus from the JFK/UMASS station to the John F Kennedy Library on the edge of the bay at Columbia Point ($14/$10). The story of the political rise of the 35th President of the United States pretty much started when his great-grandparents left Ireland in the early 1800s to escape the effects of the Irish famine.
But not all immigrants who came were penniless. Over in Cambridge, you can hang out in the green squares and red-bricked buildings of Harvard university and remember the British Puritan John Harvard who willed his fortune to it. The fortune was made by selling his mother’s alehouse in London’s notorious Southwark area, a rather unlikely beginning for the Puritan foundation of one of the most famous centres of learning in the world.
We know plenty about the immigrants and colonists but not so much about the people their arrival displaced. Down the road from the JFK Museum in Hyannis on Cape Cod (a more intimate telling of the ‘Camelot’ legend through rare family photos and papers), we meet Iyannagh, sitting contemplatively on
the village green. This statue to the leader of the Mattachiest tribe pays tribute to the American Indian chief who helped the Mayflower Pilgrims when they landed on Cape Cod on the way to Plymouth. He is the man responsible for the name Hyannis, and also part of the reason Americans sit down to eat Thanksgiving turkey every year.
To visit Boston and not spend time on Cape Cod would be a big mistake. While Boston is that most fantastic of urban spaces, a city with access to beaches, the Cape has over 500 miles of coast and it’s very easy to get there on public transport (daily bus service from South Station to Hyannis $19, summer weekend train $22). Spending our first night in Hyannis at the Cape Codder resort – ideal for families with its big waterpark (family suites from $359) – it was a one-hour ferry ride from Hyannis Port to the beautiful island of Nantucket the next morning ($25).
Nantucket measures just 14 miles by 3.5, has 82 miles of coastline and over 800 pre-civil War homes, more than anywhere else in the USA. It hosts celebrity holiday homers like Tommy Hilfiger, Ben Stiller and Google’s Eric Schmidt, while Bills Clinton and Gates are frequent visitors. Famous as the whaling capital of the world from the 17th century, visit the Whaling Museum ($20), close to the harbour to get the history of this affluent island.
The nearby island of Martha’s Vineyard is also worth a trip for the beautiful Gingerbread Houses in Oak Bluffs, brightly coloured 19th century cottages that began life as temporary tents in the Methodist summer campground, established after the American Civil War. Afterwards, head for the artists’ colony at Sconset, with its flower-bedecked cottages and long beaches, a 20-minute bus ride from Main Street.
Insiders know that the best way to Martha’s Vineyard from Cape Cod is on the Island Queen ferry from Falmouth, an easy half-hour journey ($22). We’re staying near the harbour at Shoreway Acres Inn, in a house that was once the home of a sea captain, a short walk from both beach and Main St (family rooms from $119).
But despite the history and reminders of home, whenever we hit the restaurants, bars and diners of New England, we are all American, big time. I mean where else would you get a burger served with fried banana, peanut butter, cinnamon and bacon? (Boston Burger Company, Cambridge). Or rock up for breakfast to a diner that’s happily serving cocktails before 10am with a menu that is veering towards the length of
War and Peace? (The Friendly Toast, Back Bay).
We ate doughnuts from Kane’s that are ranked ‘top 10 in America’, sitting by the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, the former highway-turned-park by the Charles River. We munched seafood on the opposite side of the river at the Barking Crab, fun, raucous and partly open to the elements.
We sampled authentic Italian in the North End, compared the Sicilian cannoli pastries from arch rivals Mike’s and Modern Pastry and choose the local Boston Public food market over the more touristy Quincy next door. And we went completely native at Fenway Park, cheering on the Red Sox to victory in what was – we were reliably informed – one of the best baseball games of the season.
We based ourselves in the heart of the city; first at the Boston Park Plaza, a fashionable city centre location in the buzzy Back Bay area (family rooms from $229); and then in the stylish Langham Hotel, close to the financial district (family rooms from $359). Both are well located for shopping at nearby Newbury and Boylston streets with their beautiful Victorian brownstone buildings and knock-down bargain finds at Nordstrom Rack.
And everywhere we went we were met with great welcome. The US may be going through a difficult period, but the people there are still friendly, open, curious and delighted to chat to strangers. It’s a testament to the spirit and welcome of this great city.
Bernadette Fallon is a travel journalist and writes extensively about her trips on Travellingwell.net