Four Seasons
200 Boylston Street; 617-338-4400; www.fourseasons.com/boston. Perhaps the grandest of Boston’s hotels is the Four Seasons. You can’t beat it for service and it’s just a few streets from the South End. Weekend rates start at $325 a night.
Boston City Limit
Best of Boston
Four Seasons Boston Hotel
Cambridge House Bed & Breakfast Inn
Cambridge House Bed & Breakfast Inn
(2218 Massachusetts Avenue; 617-491-6300; www.acambridgehouse.com) is my top pick. It is conveniently located in north Cambridge, close to Harvard Square, Lesley University, Porter Square or Davis Square subway to M.I.T., or downtown Boston to the theater district and the Freedom Trail. Rooms are tastefully decorated with a Victorian style, spacious lounge is ideal for relaxing or meeting friends. Parking, breakfast and Internet access are all included in the rate. An urban gem.
Hotel Marlowe
Hotel Marlowe
(25 Edwin H. Land Boulevard; 617-868-8000; www.hotelmarloweboston.com) just over the Charles River in Cambridge. Across the street from the wonderful science museum and duck tours, it is conveniently attached to a terrific mall. But in the hotel, you can feel a world away with a comfy communal living room where coffee and tea are served in the morning and wine is shared before dinner. The staff remembers your preferences and requests and seems perpetually cheerful.
Omni Parker House Hotel
Omni Parker House
(60 School Street; 617-227-8600; www.omnihotels.com). The service is exceptional and the friendliness of the staff is second to none. The hotel is centrally located to many of the historic sites in the city, many of which are within easy walking distance.
The Harborside Inn Hotel
The Harborside Inn
(185 State Street; 617-723-7500; www.harborsideinnboston.com) is affordable, small and quaint. A couple blocks to Quincy Market, and another to Faneuil Hall. 2 subway stops from airport. Clean, friendly, great location.
Southie: Shopping @ the South End Open Market
The South End Open Market
540 Harrison Avenue, 617-481-2257
www.southendopenmarket.com
The South End Open Market takes place every Sunday through October from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. (except on holiday weekends, like this one).
This is Boston’s version of London’s Portobello market, with vintage clothes sellers and young fashion and jewelry designers rubbing elbows with artists and cheesemakers and antiques dealers.
What’s exciting about this market is that it changes each week. So, some Sundays you’ll discover a local artist who is there only that day. Everyone sells from tables beneath white tents.
Southie: South End Buttery (Organic Bakery)
South End Buttery
314 Shawmut Avenue, 617-482-1015
The Buttery is an organic bakery where the cupcakes are named after two local Labrador retrievers. Madison, the yellow Lab, is honored by the vanilla with vanilla frosting, and Simon, the chocolate Lab, by the chocolate cupcake with chocolate frosting .
Southie: 28 Degrees Bar
28 Degrees
1 Appleton Street, 617-728-0728
www.28degrees-boston.com
28 Degrees is a bar that shimmers with flashy cocktails, a flashy circular bar and an even flashier party going on inside. There are Bellinis, pomegranate cosmos and Herradura tequila and Cointreau margaritas to be downed with a mixed crowd of Euro-students, chic-beyond-belief adults and neighborhood regulars. This bar alone fills Boston’s glamour quotient.
Southie: Toro Restaurant (Tapas)
Toro
1704 Washington Street, 617-536-4300
Toro is a Barcelona-inspired tapas restaurant that is hopping. The interior is simple and modern with whitewashed brick walls and large mirrors. The high bar stools at the communal table are the best seats to take in the action as you drink sassafras mojitos and caipirinhas with caramelized limes.
Or pick a Spanish Rioja from the four-page wine list — the wine is served in giant tumblers.
Order the Pincho sampler (a chef’s selection of small bites) that the chef, Ken Oringer, a former winner of a James Beard Award, prepares using a flaming brick oven.
Everything at Toro tastes smoky, including the pan con tomate, a Spanish dish of grilled bread rubbed with tomato, garlic, olive oil and salt; and don’t pass up the foie gras with rhubarb and strawberries.
Southie Shopping: SoWa Artswalk
SoWa, a strip of blocks south of Washington Street, is where you’ll find Boston’s emerging artists. Try both the 450 Harrison Building and the artists’ studios at 500 Harrison Avenue, which is open to the public on the first Friday of each month all summer. (Check for times at www.sowaartwalk.com.)
The city’s art scene has shifted to Harrison from Newbury Street, says Bernard Toale, whose Toale Gallery has been at 450 Harrison since 1992 (617-482-2477; www.bernardtoalegallery.com).
“The art and the clientele in the South End is younger and funkier,” he says. “First Fridays are big happening scenes, with a younger, urban, new South End crowd. I’ve been around a long time, but I’d say the South End is made up of a lot of younger galleries showing newer artists, and not just local artists.”
