Back Bay, Boston

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is my number 1 suggestion to anyone visiting Boston. The museum is located in Fenway and looks more like a house than a museum.

Its three floors of art that an well to do widow (Isabella Stewart Gardner) collected over her years of travel. The museum is a four story stone structure with a giant atrium in the middle. As you walk around the atrium, with little fountains trickling water, you can observe art from all genres and parts of the world. None of the art is labeled and they are displayed really uncnoventionally. In one room there is a Degas nailed to the back of a door!

It's great fun to pick out Singer Sargent, Degas, Manet, Matisse mixed in with Botticellis and Bellinis. You absoultely don't have to be an art enthusiast to enjoy this- its simply a delightful curiousity mixed with a serious collection of art.

To note- best month to go is April. It's Isabella's birthday month and the staff fills the atrium with beautiful flowers.

St. Boltoph Street rather defies definition. It is not part of the unique street grids of either the South End or of the Back Bay, but runs parallel to hyperbolic Huntington Avenue. It is technically in the Back Bay, as the resident parking signs indicate, but conveys a feeling of general Bostoniana incapable of achievement anywhere else in the city. This, perhaps, is why St. Boltoph is one of the city's most consistently praised out-of-the-way locations- its anonymity but also its grace- a consistent wall of bulbously whimsical Victorian apartment houses providing a hushed alternative to the traffic-thronged and skyscraper-lined Huntington.

This is the christian science center, It's a really nice place to visit, it's near the Prudential. It is near Northeaster U. where I went to school. I used to go there and read or whatever. There is a neat reflection pond there and sprinklers on one end. I used to go for a run and then finish up there and run through them. :)

The John Hancock Observatory
200 Clarendon St.
Phone 617-247-1977
Hours 9:00am-10:00pm Mon-Sat, 10:00am-10:00pm Sun (May-Oct.), 12:00am-10:00pm Sun (Nov.-Apr.) closed Thanksgiving and 12/25
Admission Adults $5; children 5-17, seniors $3

Take an elevator up to the 60th floor of New England's tallest building to see one of the most stunning views of Boston's skyline. Stroll through six audio-visual exhibits including Boston 1775, a light and sound show that recreates Boston at the time of Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere's Ride, and the Battle of Bunker Hill. You can also listen in on an aviation radio to hear the audio feed between planes and the flight deck at Logan Airport.

After Beacon Hill if you walk 10 min. to Back Bay side you can reach the park. Cambridge view...

If you have enough time go even on the prudential tower or on the john hancock tower. Both are very high and you have a huge sight all over Boston and Cambridge.