A Day In Boston Pt. 2 – Downtown Boston

I was on my way to downtown Boston! To get there from Harvard I had to get on the red line subway and take it to Park Street. From there I had to take a trolley to Government Center, which is in the center of downtown Boston.

This is the first thing you see when you walk out of the subway station at Government Center.

When I came out I had no idea where to go or what to do. I had no map and I didn’t have any internet on my phone, so I just started walking. At first I was walking to the left and after a while I wasn’t seeing anything interesting. While I was walking, I overheard a family saying they wanted to go towards the harbor. Aha! A place to go! I sneakily followed them.

This is the family I followed for a while.

I followed them down to a main street and then I went on my own. I was still hungry so I was looking for somewhere to eat. I saw a couple deli places on the road, but then I took a left down a street and BAM, I was teleported to Italy!

I’m serious! There were people speaking Italian on the streets and there were almost 100 Italian restaurants. Turns out Hanover Street is Boston’s little Italy haha.

Now instead of eating at one of the packed Italian restaurants on the main street, I thought to myself probably the best place to eat was going to be on a side street, so I walked down one and found Pagliuca’s, a really small Italian place.

They had great fresh bread and offered free water. I ordered the “Ziti Chicken Broccoli” which was alright. The broccoli was frozen and the chicken wasn’t that tasty. I thought it was okay but nothing special.

After that as I was walking down the streets and I was noticing that lots of people were carrying boxes from a place called Mike’s Pasty. I decided to try it out. The line for the cannoli’s was way too long so I got something from their bakery instead. I picked up a black forest cake cup. It was DELICIOUS! Next time I go I’m going to get a cannoli though because that line was obnoxious.

From there I walked north which took me to the market area. It was crowded and full of lots of restaurants and clothing stores.

I got a chance to see a street comedy group that were super funny.

After the market I walked east and found the harbor! The winds were so chilly there but thankfully the sun kept me warm.

You wouldn’t believe it, but after walking around for that long I was getting hungry again! I also needed to get a US phone line. So after asking around, some people advised me to go to Washington Street which is where they had an AT&T and T-Mobile.

I ended up getting  a T-Mobile line because they had a good deal. AT&T had a sim card for $60 with no internet and T-Mobile had a deal for $30 a month with 50mb data, which is enough for WhatsApp when I don’t have wifi. While I was downtown I stopped by a burrito bar  called Chipotle, which is similar to Subway in that you pick your meat and then tell them to add any vegetables that you want except that you’re making a burrito instead of sandwich. It was actually really tasty because the rice that they added to the burrito has cilantro in it which I love.

Seven total hours of walking got me tired. I wanted to get back to my hotel. I went back down to the Subway and hopped on the blue line back to Wood Island Station.

This guy was blind and tapping with his stick making a drum beat and singing along. He was pretty good.

When I got to Wood Island Station I called up the hotel for a shuttle bus to come pick me up and it came and got me within five minutes.

Overall I don’t think I’ve had so much fun in a city before. I keep telling people Boston is like a cleaner and nicer New York. The weather was cool, the people were really nice and helpful, and there was a lot to do. I didn’t even go into any museums or take any tour guides and there were lots of them! Even though I just walked around it was completely worth it and sooooo much fun. My only regrets is that my wife was not with me to experience it…. .

Go to Boston. It’s an incredible place.