4 Days in Boston...Traveling with someone with limited standing/walking ability

4 Days in Boston...💗Traveling with someone with limited standing/walking ability💗

On Tuesday, August 3 we left early in the morning for Boston.  The purpose of this trip was to go to see a Billy Joel concert rescheduled from 2020.  Al had been having trouble with his back, and standing was not working for him very well.  Walking was better...but still not comfortable.  I rearranged  and organized our trip so that his time standing was limited.  Hopefully others with limited mobility will be able to take some tips from this blog.  We still had a good time in Boston regardless.  I think we were both a bit disappointed that he wasn't getting around well, since Boston is a super walkable city.  We likely would have walked most places given that opportunity.

We arrived in the city about 11:30...perfect arrival time to beat rush hour and the lunch rush.  Our hotel was literally a half mile off of the Mass Pike-so we never actually had to drive in Boston at all!!!  We parked temporarily in front of the hotel to drop off bags.  It turned out our room was ready-so we were able to leave the car there until we put luggage in our room and get settled.   We stayed at The Revolution Hotel on Berkeley St. near Back Bay in the South End.  Our street was one way and we were happy for the sleepy neighborhood to sleep in each night.  Back Bay is made up of a lot of upscale brownstones-and super convenient for getting around Boston by foot. We had booked long ago for the cancelled Billy Joel concert, and when I tried to rebook the hotel the price had doubled.  The manager agreed to honor my Teacher's discount for the originally booked price!!!  Winning!!  She also left us a bottle of wine and a nice note for our 40th Anniversary.  We stayed in the Lofts Building with our own bathroom.  Some have shared bathrooms, which I hear are also very nice.  Super happy with our choice of hotel as well as the location of the hotel.  Parking was on Warren Street-a 1 minute walk away.  We never touched our car until departure day. 

We walked towards The Boston Public Garden looking for lunch.  We found a very upscale place called Bistro du Midi.  We found many places were not open for lunch where we walked.  We did not have a reservation (one of "those" places...😁), but she "allowed" us to sit at the bar.  Our food was great...so it was a lucky find.  They do have upstairs places with views of The Public Garden...but I guess those would be for reservation people!!!  We liked the bartender, so it worked well for us!  Gave hubby a chance to sit and recharge...after about a 15 minute walk from our hotel...not too bad.

We continued on to the Public Garden.  Loved a 15 minute ride on the lagoon on the Swan Boat.

Such an iconic Boston thing!  We continued across the street to the Boston Common.  It's the oldest park in the US...established in 1634.  The Make Way for Ducklings statues are adorable! 

From there we picked up the beginning of The Freedom Trail.  This is what Al really wanted to do in Boston.  It's 2 1/2 miles long.  We did parts of it, saw parts on transportation that we were on, and really missed the whole northern part near Bunker Hill.  Obviously, this would have been a simple walk in better days-but for this trip we had to make choices.  We really liked visiting the serenity of The Granary Burying Ground.  So many famous Bostonians were buried there. 

Made a stop at Beantown Pub for a sit down time.  Yes, of course we had a Sam Adams beer!!

From there we took an Uber to Harpoon Brewery.  Really cute place near the water.  The outside area was not open on Tuesdays-but inside is huge!  

We took Lyft back to the hotel.  Generally, in Boston during the time we were there Lyft was pricing cheaper than Uber.  But...Uber can be booked ahead of time, so we took that into consideration.  We also decided on the basis of how long it would take Uber/Lyft to arrive.  On the rides we booked on the spot we never waited more than 2-10 minutes.  Usually about 3 minutes.  All public transportation requires masks-including Uber/Lyft.

Dinner that night was at Cosmica, which is a Mexican Restaurant located at our hotel.  We had prebooked 7PM reservations on Open Table.  We ate outside in a cute area.  I really wanted to like this place-but we were underwhelmed.  The prices were very high-the food was more trendy than good.  The margaritas and Sangria were wonderful.  This is a great place for a drink!!

Incredible sunset on Berkeley street walking back to our Loft!  I stood literally in the middle of the street to capture this shot!  After dinner I preordered 2 Ubers for the following day.  One to the Harbor for pick up at 8AM, and one to Fenway for pickup at 4PM. When we need to be someplace for a specific time we order Uber ahead of time.  It works great for those early morning airport runs where there might not be random drivers at 4AM wanting to drive to the airport.  Both Ubers were totally on time!!

 Wednesday morning we grabbed coffee and a pastry at the Coffee café in our hotel, then hopped in the Uber.  Our pre booked Duck Boat Tour was scheduled to take off at 9AM, and we ended up at the pier at 8:15.  We hoped we would be early...I built in time for traffic, Uber not showing, etc.  Neither happened-and that is perfect!!  It gave us 45 minutes to relax before our Duck Boat Tour.  Al sat at one of the many picnic seating areas in the Harbor-and I took off on the Harbor Walk.  I understand that the walk is actually 40 miles long-I did not go that far!!! It was a beautiful day, sun just coming out from the clouds and the humidity low.  Perfect day for walking Boston. 

The Duck Boat was awesome.  Al said it was his favorite.  It is an amphibious vehicle, on land and water.  The tour guide was a retired history teacher.  He was very interesting, and funny. 80 minute great ride (20 minutes of it was on the Charles River). The open air vehicle was full-so I was glad we had booked ahead of time.

We had also booked 2 days on the Old Town Trolley Hop On Hop Off Tour.  The Duck Boat at the harbor was actually also Stop #1 of the HOHO, so that seemed logical to get on there.  There are 18 stops...supposed to take 1 hour 45 minutes.  Ummm...nope!  Our plan was to ride around all the way (like we usually do on HOHO), and then get off at Stop 8 for lunch.  No way that even made sense due to how slowly the HOHO was getting thru the first few stops...so we just got off at Stop #8 for lunch before completing the full length.  I also was not a big fan of our driver.  He was sarcastic...political, yelling at older women to hurry up.  I was done with him.

Stop #8 was Cheers (Bull and Finch Pub).  Not expecting a good meal-but wouldn't have missed a stop there.  The food was incredible!!!  Great clam chowder!  My veggie panini had really fresh veggies.  Yummmm...my stomach is growling just thinking about it!  But...the place was SUPER packed in like sardines.  Literally, we have not seen this many people since early March 2020.  They also allowed people who were simply going to the gift shop to wander thru the restaurant-which just increased traffic flow.  I would not have even given it a thought prior to last March-but we do think about those kind of things now.   We've been home over 2 weeks now, so no issues there thankfully!!

After lunch...attempted to get back on HOHO.  Bad choice.  This particular stop is probably the busiest one.  Luckily Al found a place to sit on a cement barrier-but there were tons of people waiting for the Trolley.  I stayed in line-2 trolleys picked up before we finally got on the 3rd.  Lots of wasted time, and so glad Al had a place to sit and wasn't standing.  Normally when we travel we do not use these HOHO to get around, just for ride around once tour-and I can remember now why we don't!

Got a great driver this time 😏, and we took it back around to Stop 1.  From there, we took Lyft back to our hotel and got ready for the concert.

We had special shirts custom made from the poster of my first Billy Joel concert.  This one was #7!

Our preordered Uber arrived perfectly on time.  Fenway was hopping when we arrived at 4:15 and we were  dropped right off at our Gate E.  We had prebooked a pre concert dinner starting at 5:30 so that Al would not have to stand in a long line waiting to get in to the concert.  This worked perfectly.  Right next to the Gate we found a chair for Al, and I wandered around a bit checking Fenway out.  In reality, I wish I had paid better attention to where we were, because when it came time to leave we were totally lost, there were a million people, (actually only 37,000) and it was dark!!!  Honestly, I really do suck at directions anyway...so it might not have made any difference!!

The pre party was great-unlimited food/drink.  We had access to the Green Monster to overview the field.  If I did it again (and we would) I would have gone to the Green Monster when our access was available from  6:00 until 8:00, and would have watched the  field excitement from there.  Our seats were on the total opposite end of Fenway in the Right Field Box 6.  It was a HIKE all the way around to get to our seats.  It was a light rain, so that just added to the fun!!  The concert was scheduled to begin at 6:30-we had heard it wouldn't start until 7:30, and in actuality it was about 8 when it began. Now that we are familiar with how Fenway Concerts work-it would have been best to just stay at Vineyard Vines/Green Monster the entire preparty (5:30-8)...then go to our seats.  Next time!!

As stated earlier, leaving was messy.  I kind of wanted to just wait in our seats for the crowd to settle down-but Al thought we could just head out. Obviously a mass of people-we walked 10 minutes in the wrong direction hoping the crowd would disperse a bit so we could get an Uber.  Finally, we got turned around in the right direction-and ended up walking all the way back to the hotel.  It was about a 34 minute walk...but we did 54 minutes since we went in the wrong direction to start!!😖  We had full groups of people basically all the way to Back Bay-by then we were almost at the hotel!  I wish I had chatted with the pedicab drivers.  They were driving their bikes all over trying to drum up business.  I heard them say $150 for one couple...but I have heard they will bargain.  We would have only paid $50 since it was so close. Oh well...Al did make it, but the end was rough for him!

Thursday morning it was downright pouring!  If Al had been walking well we probably would have either done what we had planned-which was the Boston Tea Party Ships Museum, or go walk the north end of the Freedom Trail. The Museum is opened such limited days (Thursday-Sunday) that there are a lot of people trying to go, and the wait might have been long.  Al was pretty tired from his back, so we decided to just stay in until it was time to go to our lunch.  Loved hanging out in that windowsill with morning coffee!!

Went to grab breakfast-but because we were a bit later the pastries were all out at the café.  We walked across the street to a great little place called Billy's Sub Shop.  Glad we happened upon it.  Food was really good!!

We took Lyft to the Sam Adams Tap Room.  It's kind of new-a satellite for the main brewery.  It opened at noon, and we arrived about 11:15.  

Since we had time in the area (still raining pretty hard), we visited the New England Holocaust Memorial.  Wow!  An outdoor inspiring remembrance of  6 towers representing the 6 million Jews killed during the Holocaust.  Heart-wrenching but so important to never forget. We literally just happened upon this-I wish there was more press for this absolutely spectacular memorial, and I was really glad we had the chance to visit and remember. The mist coming up through the spires was downright chilling.

The Sam Adams Tap Room was pretty quiet as it first opened at noon, but by the time we left it was busy.  We sat at the bar, and met some really nice visitors who were there because their flight got cancelled.  Oops...😠 Great place-lots of space, excellent Sam Adams beer choices!!

From there we walked down to the Harbor to catch the Boat Tour that goes with the HOHO bus tour.  It was still raining lightly-and finally finished raining just as we boarded the boat.  The boat was pretty full-and there is open air on the top, but we weren't sure about the weather, so we sat below on the bottom deck for less walking for Al.  Masks were required for anyone inside. I liked the narrated boat ride-nice views of the Boston Logan Airport and we saw lots of big airplanes taking off and landing going right over our boat.  That would have been fun to see from outside!!  Al wasn't a big fan of this 90 minute trip...and he may have even nodded off a couple times!!!

After the boat ride we walked to the HOHO bus to take it just 1 stop to the North End.  In retrospect-we did not need to have purchased a 2 day pass-a one day would have been enough.  At the North End we walked a bit more of the Freedom Trail.  The North End is the Italian area-so many restaurants and little piazzas all over the place.  Mike's Pastry  is one of the most famous pastry shops.  We waited in line for a long time (Al had a place to sit down-but he said he was good. There was seating available out on the street sidewalk area), and finally got to make our purchase to bring home for us as well as our neighbor who was picking up our mail and paper.  Their specialty are cannolis-they have 20 different kinds!

Dinner that night was at the #4 restaurant in Boston...Mamma Maria's.  We made an Open Table reservation for early at 5:15, as that was our only choice when I made the reservation a week earlier. Loved everything about this high end Italian restaurant.  Beautiful little corner building-outside seating in the piazza (still a little worried about the potential rain so we ate inside), and a couple churches nearby.  Reminded us so much of Italy. Excellent food-excellent service...not cheap at all... BUT CHEAPER THAN COSMICA!!!  We never have a problem paying good money for good food and service.

Took Lyft back to the hotel, and relaxed that night with our bottle of wine that had been given to us by the hotel for our anniversary.

Friday morning it was time to leave.  Beautiful sunrise from my windowsill with coffee!!  Grabbed breakfast at the café.  Thought that 10:00 would be a perfect departure time after rush hour-and it was super simple to pick up our car, load it, and head out.  In total we spent $100 to park 3 nights in the lot, and $166 in Uber/Lyft charges to get around the city for 3 days.  There was cheaper parking (they have a deal with the hotel) at a lot farther away, but due to walking difficulties we decided to just pay the higher price for less walking. The parking garage we used had a full time attendant wandering the place, and it felt perfectly safe...even though we did have a NY Yankees decal on the back window!!!

We really loved our stay in Boston.  Once Al's back is better we want to make another trip so that we can walk around a bit more.  We travel frequently, and Boston is so compact with lots of opportunities to sit and relax, that it makes for the perfect "walkable city". Kudos to the Founding Fathers...that ended up creating  a hot mess of driving, but managed to make walking the perfect way to get around!!!

All underlined places have been reviewed in greater detail on Trip Advisor.