My family of 6, all adults, will be arriving in Boston on Saturday evening and will be spending 2 full days in the Boston area. We have tickets for the Red Sox game at 2:00 on Sunday, but we are wide open for the remaineder of our time. What itinerary do you suggest. We are drivng and will be staying at the Constitution Inn near Old Ironsides and plan to use public transportation as much as possible.

It would help to know your interests.
Also, you can plug into the search bar "Boston" and see some threads will come up on the right with ideas for days and weeks in Boston with lots of information.

Interested in the Freedom Trail/ you can start from where yoyu are "backwards' and end up in Boston Common area - or take the water shuttle from where you are to Boston waterfront and start from there -

Museums? My favorite is Isabella Stewart Gardner for the building, gardens, courtyard, art - also the MFA (which if you check their website has a restaurant Bravo/piano bar and outdoor seatingn which is nice and also esp nice if it's a night with planned music in the courtyard.

North End: for a bit of Italy, walking, dining, coffee and desserts....walking the waterfront after

Duck Tour for an overall view?
Skywalk Observatory in Prudential Tower for a view from Cape and Islands to Northern New England and history exhibit?

walking Charles St, walkover to Esplanade, Commonwealth Ave and thru the Garden/Common

outdoor dining on Newbury/Boylston St

Ferries to any of the historic boston harbor islands? Georges?

here are some recent threads with some info that might help you narrow it down:

http://fodors.com/forums/threadselec...1&tid=35001376

http://fodors.com/forums/threadselec...1&tid=35002160

http://fodors.com/forums/threadselec...1&tid=35028375

also check out
cityofboston.gov (and click on visitors)

boston.com
mbta.com
hopstop.com
thefreedomtrail.org
boston.citysearch.com

On Boston Common is a huge tourist kiosk with assistance inside, pamphlets, lists of everything, freedom trail self guided tour info, etc.

Have Fun ! Post back any specific questions...

Art fans or not, go see the Edward Hopper exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts:

http://www.mfa.org/hopper/

If you want to grab lunch before the Red Sox game, there are a few options outside of Fenway. The Boston Beerworks has a great menu and a wide variety of beers to choose from (beerworks.net). we ate there a few weeks ago before a sox game and we loved it! There's also the Game On restaurant (gameonboston.com). There's a wide variety of food options inside the ballpark, but it's very expensive ($7.50 for a beer and $4.25 for a hotdog...and there's always the $4.00 bottled water!). All in all, it's much cheaper to eat outside the ballpark and the quality food is much better.
Enjoy your trip!
KenM

fyi you should buy tix ahead of time for a show like Hopper if you decide to go -

also, if you don't use opentable.com, it may help with some restaurants - as well as menupages, but on ot you can actually make rezzies too

The way I figure it you do not have 2 days to plan for - only Monday. I would suggest you spend the day walking the Freedom Trail - starting at the USS Constitution in Charlestown near where you will be staying. Stop along the way to see whatever you want, perhaps having lunch in the Faneuil Hall/Quincy Market area.

End the day in the North End (although you will already have walking thru it on the Freedom Trail) and have dinner. You might want to wander by some likely restaurants earlier in your Freedom Trail walk and read menus to plan your dinner time attack.

If you prefer not to do that much strolling, book a Duck Tour (not Super Duck Excursions - which is a competitor recently forced to change their name since it was confusing). Then spend the afternoon in a museum - I would suggest Isabella Stewart Gardner or perhaps new Institute of Contemporary Art.

I like the idea of getting to Fenway Park area really early - perhaps by noon. Have lunch at one of the places mentioned - I would pick Game On - and then head into Park to catch the atmosphere.

As I have mentioned on this board before, some things to know before you go to a Red Sox game. First, the seats are the most uncomfortable seats in MLB. Food inside Fenway is horrible and expensive, even by sporting event standards. Fans may chant "Yankees Suck" at times during the game for reasons known only to the chanters - since they will not be playing the Yankees. Towards the end of the game, they play the old Neil Diamond song "Sweet Caroline" and it is a big event, even though it has nothing to do with the Red Sox.

No one leaves before the end of the game. Fans are very well informed about both the game and the players.

Watch Manny Ramirez (left field) when play is not active. He may disappear into the scoreboard - supposedly to pee, but who knows what he is doing in there.

MBTA.com is an excellent website for planning your public transportation trips - they even have a feature where you can enter address and it will plan your route and means of transportation.

Thanks so much for your responses. I will attempt to ask more specific questions in the future.

We will be staying for 3 nights at the Constitution Inn, near the USS Constitution. One concern is ....what is a good place for classic Boston Seafood? We want a good local restaurant.

Additionally, we were planning to use the trolly to get our perspective and then hit the sites of the Freedom Trail. On past trips, we seem to learn so much from the comments of the drivers and find that it works well to get an overview and then go back for numerous stops at a later time. We are all quite fit and capable of walking, but our time is limited.

On the other hand, I keep hearing people talk about the Duck Tours and am familiar with the concept. Is the Duck tour a better choice?

Finally, in an earlier reading someone commented on a "kick burger" and something called a 'Lime Ricky". Does anyone know the name of this restaurant. I can not find the source.

We are arriving on Saturday around midday and leaving on Monday just after touring the Kennedy Library.

Thanks for any tips.

I have never heard of a kick burger. A lime rickey is a non-alcoholic drink whose primary ingredients are seltzer water, lime juice and sugar.

Local seafood - you could start a great argument here with that one. Places most often mentioned are Union Oyster House (old, authentic and, in my opinion, not very good food); Legal Seafoods (yes, it is a chain but always excellent quality). My favorite is Jasper White's Summer Shack - I guess it now qualifies as a chain because there are 3 or 4 of them. The best one is in Cambridge at Alewife MBTA stop on Red line. This is the original with big tanks of lobsters, visible kitchen, chalkboard specials. There is another one downtown which is not nearly as good.

A word of caution about seafood - it is always expensive if it is fresh. If you find an extraordinary deal, you are probably getting non-local frozen fish (like at Red Lobster)

You don't have all that much time. I am not sure the hop-on-hop-off trolley, Freedom Trail and Duck tours fit in along with Kennedy Library. Since it is Saturday afternoon rather than evening as you stated in your first post, that does give you a little more time.

Duck Tours are narrated tours on old WWII amphibious and road vehicles. They cover a small part of the city and include a light narrated semi-history. Highlight is when they enter the Charles River and sail around for a while. Tour takes about an hour. With your time limitations I would pick either this or trolley tour, depending on desired tone of your travels. Perhaps this wopuld be good for Saturday afternoon. Sunday AM you could walk part of Freedom Trail, but many buildings will not be open.

Do not know how much time you want to spend at JFK Library or what time you are leaving - you may or may not have time for anything else on Monday.

If you took the trolley tour thing (there are 2-3 companies that do these) I doubt you will have time to return to see points of interest - you would have to do this either Saturday afternoon or Monday morning. Many people spend the entire day seeing things along the route.

Definitely go to Boston Common. You may want to venture down to the Esplanade on the Charles River if you're up for the walk.

Depending on what you like to do, you also want to go to Quincy Market/Fanuel Hall.

The ladies would enjoy Newbury street and the shopping...there is a great Tapas bar there called Tapeo that you should try, if you enjoy Spanish cuisine.

Harvard Square is a lot of fun...it's just a ride away from downtown on the red-line. Grab lunch at Spice on Holyoke Street...my favorite restaurant in that area.

Top of the Hub is in the Prudential Building...dinner can be expensive, but it's a great view of the city at night and is a great place for a drink or dessert.

Enjoy the Red Sox game!