Not to be confused with the Riddick Street Bridge which is where the chronicles were written…read more This is a gorgeous bridge between Allston and Cambridge that brings traffic directly from Allston into Cambridge and not the other way. It looks similar to the other one just down the river, but I use the other one much more often, which is the Western Avenue Bridge, because I'm usually traveling from my friends' houses in Cambridge into Allston to have some fun. This one was built a year later but it looks very similar. I'm pretty sure the same designers and what not are responsible for it. It looks a bit like the famous Pont-Neuf in Paris. It's gorgeous.

Love this historic neighborhood. I could have walked here way longer and I would return to explore…read moreit even more. It is majestic, one of the oldest in the city, dated around 1795. Great restored historic house, nice cobblestone streets, everything is well maintained and elegant. Isabella Stewart Gardner used to live here, you can see her older house, it has a plaque on it. It borders Boston Common and the beautiful Esplanade! If you have time while visiting Boston, definitely stroll on the streets of Beacon Hill. You'll get a better sense of the city. There are museums around, you can take a tour or created yours like I did!

Another popular spot/area to check out while visiting Boston is the Acorn street within Beacon…read moreHill. It's a cobblestone road where lots of people go to take pictures. It is a very historic area, it's beautiful and also be mindful of the folks that are living there. It was easy to walk to and find and very close to the park.

Brookline is our home for the week as we visit our daughter in Boston, very walkable (though their…read moretraffic lights are confusing, no cars move while pedestrians walk, even in the same direction). People are friendly--2 guys were sitting on our rental stoop chatting and very politely moved out of our way as we left, apologizing though there was no reason to ;). We walked a mile to Whole Foods yesterday carrying our groceries home among the 4 of us. We passed the gorgeous public library and through some amazing residential neighborhoods (the architecture!) Great first impression!

If you want a free line of Coke because you have no money, then what you want is a Broke-line. And…read moreI'm sorry but unless you're a really sexy person willing to put out (in which case is it really free), then you probably won't find one. I don't even do drugs so don't look at me. Brookline is a really nice and fancy and relaxing City to the south west of Boston which is really part of Boston, let's be honest. You'll find lots of suburban niceties here but also some citiness and some cool stuff in terms of food and drinks and just in general I really like it here.

Worth a see. The Citgo sign is a Boston landmark. Yep yep…read more I drive the area all the time, twice daily heading into Cambridge. Great area, the BU and Fenway Park, and certainly a lot to do. Been goin there since The Rat, Charlie's and the old record buy-sell-swap store were there. BU Bookstore is rock solid. Fun area for sure. Gimme back 1990.

The CITGO Sign sits above Kenmore Square in Boston and has been part of the city's skyline long…read moreenough that it has crossed from commercial signage into something closer to a civic landmark. We approached from the bridge and looked out toward the upper decks of Fenway Park, and the sign simply became part of the visual geography of that part of the city in a way that few pieces of advertising ever manage. The sign is a large triangular structure with an illuminated CITGO logo that cycles through colors at night. Seeing it after dark is considerably more impressive than during the day. The nighttime version, with the lights shifting against the surrounding urban skyline, is what earns the sign its reputation as a photograph worth taking rather than just a thing we pass on the way to the ballpark. The connection to Fenway Park and Red Sox baseball is part of what has embedded the sign in the local consciousness. It is visible from the outfield seats and certain sections of the park, and when the Red Sox hit a home run the sign has historically lit up in response. That gives it a participatory function within the game experience rather than just a passive presence on the skyline. For a piece of Boston iconography that costs nothing to see and requires no planning, the CITGO Sign is a quiet landmark that rewards a moment of attention, especially after dark when the city lights come alive. It is not a destination on its own, but it is a meaningful part of the Kenmore Square experience and worth a glance whenever you are in the area.

At first it seems like a celebration of local quirk and kitsch, this 45 minute trolley tour of the…read moreside streets and neighborhoods of Somerville, showcasing the various incandescent manifestations of overzealous holiday enthusiasm. But there's also something a bit more ominous at work here. It's like the Cold War never ended, just became condensed, localized, and about trying to out-gaudy your neighbor, rather than blow them off the map. Or maybe it is about blowing stuff up - fuses, switch boxes, the power of an entire city. Turning down certain streets, you realize that a sort of Hatfields and McCoys type turf battle is being waged, with Christmas lights as the bullets. Houses directly across from one another, annually upping the ante, trying to blot out each other even as they blot out the night sky with the wattage of a billions suns enveloping their homes. In fact, are there even homes there, underneath the blinding riot of colored lights, plastic Santas, blowup Frosty's and life sized Nativities? I don't know. There are certain houses which bear more resemblance to the mothership at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, than anything built by man. You owe it to yourself to do this once, at least. The tour guides will rattle you off mini-bios of the main players, as well as the staggering amounts of their utility bills. There must be better ways you can spend a 1000 bucks in a month. Thereafter, just use the map they give you to do your own tour at a more leisurely pace, so you can truly gape in awe that these man made wonders of the world deserve. N.b. Not to be confused with the Illuminati Tour, which departs from an undisclosed location, goes God knows where, and leaves you a babbling paranoid idiot at its conclusion

Too much fun. 1) I love trolleys 2) I love tours 3) I love happy people. This is a tour put…read moretogether by volunteer tour guides (Somerville Arts Council) of christmas lights and decorations around Somerville! The trolley tries to make tight turns, the tour guides are making jokes, and everyone's just excited to be there. I love the carpenter's house who adds one decoration to his set-up a year. And the guy who dresses up as santa to wave out the door to the trolley....I'd been living in for Somerville for 2 years before I took this tour and this tour really brought Somerville to life for me. To hear the neighborly stories and tidbits....and go down some of the streets I'd never drive down myself. Even if you can't make it one year, at least pick up the self-tour map so you can go check-out the cool houses yourself until the following year! When we couldn't make it one year, we picked up the map every year and will check out a couple every weekend.

The Francis Parkman Memorial is hidden in plain sight, opposite the Brookline side of Jamaica Pond…read morenear the intersection of Francis Parkman Drive and Perkins street. Parkman was one of the first great historians of the United States, best known for The Oregon Trail and France and England in North America. He was born in Boston in 1823, and during the 1850s purchased land bordering Jamaica Pond for a summer home. The current memorial sits near the former site of his house. Parkman suffered from poor health, but was remarkably active. He rowed a boat on the pond regularly, and visited the general store on Centre st. to talk with the locals about the issues of the day. In his later years, he raised and hybridized flowers, becoming a professor of horticulture at Harvard's Bussey Institute at the Arnold Arboretum. When he died in 1893, Parkman was one of America's great men of letters. The Francis Parkman grammar school on Walk Hill street, near Forest Hills, was named in his honor. His house - Sunnyside - was removed when Jamaica Plain Park was created by Frederick Law Olmsted. Visiting the memorial requires a cautious crossing of Parkman Drive from the pond.

a nice seating area right by JP. I don't know much about Francis Parkman but the memorial is a nice…read morearea to contemplate as it over looks Jamaica Pond. A nice peaceful area.

On Boylston st. Just south where the Boston Public garden & Boston Common meet you can find the…read moreEdgar Allan Poe statue. Another cool statue that you can stumble upon just walking through Boston. During the Boston marathon weekend this one of the statues the city put a participant bib on. The only one statue I saw with a bib was the Democratic Donkey by old city hall. Makes me wonder how many statues in the city does Boston put bibs on during marathon weekend.

I've been a huge fan of Edgar Allan Poe's writings since middle school. Re-reading his stories is…read moresomething I never get bored doing. For that reason, this statue holds a special place in my heart (as I'm sure it is for thousands more like me who love his literature). It's a beautifully designed bronze sculpture created by Stefanie Rocknak in 2014. It is located at the Edgar Allan Poe Square. As he was originally from Boston, it seems a fitting tribute to his memory.

This interesting Double Jackknife Drawbridge (technically a double-leaf, rolling-lift through-truss…read morebridge) connects Meridian Street in East Boston with Pearl Street in Chelsea, Massachusetts. Also known as the Meridian Street Bridge, It was constructed in 1954 and named in memory of American Legion Department Commander, Andrew P. McArdle (1896-1950). The bridge was rehabilitated not long ago and appears to be in good condition. Besides the Chelsea Street Bridge, the McArdle Bridge is the only other toll-free option to drive from East Boston and Logan Airport without heading North. Embedded in the walkway of the bridge is a small brass "Coleman Bros." plaque featuring a horsehead logo. I suspect they were the original contractor when the bridge was built. Coleman Bros. was a heavy-steel construction company that is also credited for their work at Boston's Fenway Park in 1934. The deck of the McArdle Bridge, for both cars and pedestrians, is made of steel mesh. For some of us, it brings on a little vertigo, especially if looking down while walking across because you can look straight through to the river below. This is also not a bridge to be crossed while wearing Stiletto heels! Overall, the McArdle Bridge is a tough workhorse that serves as vital link for it's surrounding neighborhoods.