The South End has become a bastion of creativity and artistic expression. Walking down Washington Street you’ll see where the inspiration comes from in the well-preserved architecture.
Home to an eclectic mix of design boutiques, Natalie van Dijk Carpenter’s Lekker, which opened here five years ago, stands out. Lekker the Dutch word for alluring, enticing, great, attractive and tempting is fitting for Carpenter’s European concept store.
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Clarendon Square Bed & Breakfast
This 1860s merchant townhouse, Clarendon Square (from $165) has been fully gut-renovated, nineteenth-century townhouse. During the extensive renovation many elements of the house such as plaster medallions, mouldings, and doors were salvaged and restored. You can’t escape the 21st century however as there are flat-screen HD TVs, DVDs, surround sound, and wi-fi.
Clarendon Square
198 West Brookline St.
Boston MA 02118
617-536-2229
Clarendon Sqaure B&B Parlor
This great find is located on a charming, tree-lined block in the increasingly desirable South End. Encore Bed and Breakfast (from $180) is quite eclectic mixing 21st century sleek Italian furniture into a traditional 19th century brick-walled townhouse.
We recommend, that of the 3 guest quarters (each has a private bathroom with shower, cable TV/DVD, and a queen-sized bed), you opt for the top-floor Albee Room and enjoy skyline views from the private terrace.
Encoure Bed and Breakfast is within easy walking distance of the Hynes Convention Center, Copley Square, Symphony Gall, the Theatre District, Black Bay, as well as the best in dining, galleries, and shopping in the South End.
Encore Bed & Breakfast · 116 West Newton Street · Boston, MA 02118
617-247-3425 · info@encorebandb.com
Union Oyster House, 41 Union Street, (617) 227-2750, www.unionoysterhouse.com, is around the corner from Faneuil Hall. Yes, it’s old (open 1826, it bills itself as the oldest continuously operating restaurant in the nation), and very touristy. But kids can visit the Freedom Trail room to spot the carvings and displays of the main stops on the trail and chow down on a fish filet sandwich ($7.95) or hot dog ($4.95), while adults enjoy a bowl of creamy clam chowder ($5.50).
The famous Swan Boats in the Public Garden, www.swanboats.com ($2.50; age 2 to 15, $1), offer another peaceful interlude. While parents sit back for the 15-minute figure-eight cruise around the lagoon (including an island where the ducks lived in the book “Make Way for Ducklings”), children will be quietly intrigued by the driver pedaling away, bicyclelike, behind the swan in the back of the boat.
M.I.T. Museum Main Gallery
265 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, (617) 253-4444
web.mit.edu/museum
($5; age 5 to 18, $2; closed Monday), you’ll find robots, 3-D holograms, including one of the remains of a 2,000-year-old man discovered in a bog in England, and an exhibition of photographs that capture instants in time like when a bullet explodes through an apple.
The Museum of Fine Arts is Boston’s grand museum, but the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum around the corner, at 280 The Fenway, www.gardnermuseum.org, (617) 278-5156, is Boston’s jewel.
In the late 19th century Mrs. Gardner and her husband traveled the world collecting art. Their home, built in the style of a 15th-century Venetian palace, houses great works from Europe, Asia, and the Middle East along with Mrs. Gardiner’s eccentric personal touches like a moonstone covering a lock of Robert Browning’s hair.
The eccentric Venetian-style palazzo built about a century ago that is crammed with 2,500 of Mrs. Gardner’s acquisitions. Her will warns that if the permanent collection is disturbed, it will be given to Harvard; that partly explains the empty frames of two Rembrandts and a Vermeer taken along with other pieces in a 1990 robbery that is unsolved. Consider buying the $4 audio guide or $16 paperback guide because much of the collection is unlabeled.
Visitors with the name Isabella are admitted free; everyone else pays $10.