The red line is three miles long. The good part is everything either side of it.
Which Freedom Trail walk actually goes inside the meeting houses. What a Salem ghost tour costs in October. Whether the harbour cruise beats the duck boat. Reviews of every tour you can book in Boston, Salem and Cambridge.
The trail, the harbour, Salem after dark, and a ballpark nobody knocked down.
The four bookings a first Boston week gets built around. What each one costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The first morningFreedom Trail History Small Group Walking TourThree miles of red brick from the Common to the Old North Church, in a group small enough to hear the guide.
02The day on the waterCity Cruises Whale Watching CruiseOut past the harbour islands to Stellwagen Bank, where the humpbacks feed from spring through autumn.
03The Salem nightHistory and Hauntings of Salem Guided Walking TourWitch-trial history told on the streets where it happened, once the day trippers have gone home.
04The ballparkBoston Fenway Park: Guided Ballpark Tour with OptionsDown to the warning track at Fenway, under the Green Monster, on a morning with no game in the way.
Boston is small enough to walk. Salem and Cambridge are a ferry and a subway stop away.
A colonial core you can cross on foot, a working harbour with whales at the end of it, a witch-trial town up the coast, and two universities on the far bank of the Charles. Six starting points, and the best day out in each.
Boston reads better from the harbour than from the bridge.
The skyline only lines up properly from a deck. The humpbacks feed at Stellwagen Bank, an hour out past the harbour islands. The ferry up to Salem beats Route 1A on any Saturday. This is still a working port, and it sells tickets.
Boston: the trail before lunch, the harbour or the North End after it.
Everything in Boston →
Start at the Common while the trail is still quiet, break for lunch in the North End, and spend the afternoon either on the water or on a trolley that stops where your feet gave out. These three carry more travellers than anything else in the city.
Guided walk, or the brick on your own
The line is painted on the pavement and free to follow. A guide gets you inside the Old State House and the burying grounds, and turns sixteen plaques into one continuous argument about 1770.
Hop-on trolley, thirteen stops
Boston is compact but it is not flat, and the cobbles punish. The trolleys loop the whole colonial core and the waterfront, so you walk the bits you want and ride the rest.
Hanover Street, and everything off it
Salumi counters, a bakery arguing with the bakery opposite about cannoli, and a walk that runs from Paul Revere’s door to the harbour with a plate at every stop.
The most popular days out in Boston and Salem.
Every review on the site →The tours more travellers take than anything else here, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
History and Hauntings of Salem Guided Walking Tour
Explore Salem’s witch-trial past, haunted stories, colonial streets, and modern witches on a two-hour guided walk by day or lantern light.
From · $36
Read our review →
2
Boston Duck Boat Sightseeing City Tour with Cruise Along Charles River
from $59
3
Freedom Trail History Small Group Walking Tour
from $35
4
Boston Hop-On Hop-Off Trolley Tour with 13 Stops
from $52
5
City Cruises Whale Watching Cruise
from $85
6
Salem’s Best Ghost Tour
from $30
7
Boston Duck Tour: The Original and World-Famous
from $60
8
Harvard University Student-Guided Walking Tour
from $22
The North End is six streets deep and it has been feeding this city since 1890.
Hanover and Salem Street hold the salumi counters, the two rival cannoli bakeries and enough red-sauce dining rooms to argue about for a week. Around them: chowder on the waterfront, doughnuts with a history lesson, and taverns that were pouring before the Revolution.
Every food tour and tasting →
Everything worth seeing in New England is inside a day of Boston.
Plymouth is forty miles south and has the Mayflower story told by people in character. The Newport mansions are ninety minutes down the coast. Martha’s Vineyard is a bus and a ferry and worth the whole day. Lexington and Concord, where the shooting started, are a half hour west.
- 1Boston to Martha’s Vineyard Day Trip with Optional Island Tourfrom $129
- 2Martha’s Vineyard Day Trip with Optional Island Tourfrom $129
- 3Martha’s Vineyard Day Trip with Optional Island Tour from Bostonfrom $130
Three ways to walk Boston, and the one you actually want.
Almost every good day here starts with walking. Three kinds of walk, what it costs to join each one, and what you get for the money.
What a day out in Boston actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. A good number of the best days here come in under the price of dinner in the North End.
Guided trail walks, museum entry, the Salem night tours and the self-guided audio loops.
Whale boats, ballpark tours, food walks, harbour cruises and the day trips down the coast.
Private guides, chartered sailing days and the island trips that take the whole day.
Three things that only happen in Boston and the towns next to it.
Colonial old towns exist all over the eastern seaboard. A painted line joining sixteen of them, a courthouse town that has never stopped answering for 1692, and a ballpark with a thirty-seven-foot wall in play do not.
The Freedom Trail
A red line was set into the pavement in 1951 to stop visitors getting lost between the sites, and it turned sixteen unconnected buildings into a single three-mile walk. It runs from Boston Common across the river to Bunker Hill, past two burying grounds, the meeting house where the Tea Party was argued out, and the church that hung the lanterns. Following it is free; the guide is what gets you inside.
- 1Freedom Trail History Small Group Walking Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 6,450 reviews
- 2Boston Freedom Trail Walking Tour with Costumed Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,531 reviews
- 3Boston Food & History: Pizza, North End & Freedom Trail★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,772 reviews
The Witch Trials
Nineteen people were hanged and one was pressed to death on the evidence of neighbours, and the town has spent three centuries explaining how that happened. The memorial off Charter Street lists each name on its own stone bench. The best tours here stay with the court records and the streets the accused actually walked, and they do not pretend it was anything other than a judicial killing.
- 1The Salem Witch Walk★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,301 reviews
- 2Wicked Awesome Tours: Witch Trial History and Salem Haunts!★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,032 reviews
- 3Best Salem Witch Trials Historical Walking Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 743 reviews
Fenway Park
The oldest park in the majors is wedged into a street grid that refused to move for it, which is why left field is short and the wall is thirty-seven feet high. Tours go out on non-game mornings and on game days before the gates open: down the warning track, up to the Monster seats, and into a press box that has not been modernised much since Ted Williams.
- 1Boston Fenway Park: Guided Ballpark Tour with Options★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 3,606 reviews
- 2Tour of Historic Fenway Park, America’s Most Beloved Ballpark★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 3,013 reviews
- 3Boston Red Sox Baseball Game Ticket at Fenway Park★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 19 reviews
Four Boston bookings that will not wait.
Most of this city can be arranged over breakfast for the same afternoon. These four run on ballpark schedules, ferry timetables and one town’s very busy October.
- 01Boston Fenway Park: Guided Ballpark Tour with OptionsBallpark tours stop when the gates open for a home game. On game days there are only a handful of morning slots and they go first.
- 02City Cruises Whale Watching CruiseThe whale boats run spring to autumn and cancel on the swell. There is no winter version of this trip.
- 03Salem’s Best Ghost TourOctober is the whole town’s season. Salem tours in the run-up to Halloween sell out weeks ahead, and the trains up are standing room.
- 04Boston to Martha’s Vineyard Day Trip with Optional Island TourThe island day runs on a coach and a ferry timetable, and the last boat back does not wait for you.
Boston loses two days in five to weather. Have the indoor plan ready.
A nor’easter in February, fog off the water in June, a thunderstorm that arrives in ten minutes in August. The walking tours run anyway and the harbour boats do not. The answer is the same in every season: book the roofed thing for the bad day and keep the trail for the clear one.
Salem is a courthouse town that never stopped answering for 1692.
Thirty minutes by ferry or commuter rail, and the whole place is built around one year. Take the daytime history walk for the trial record and the memorial, the night walk for the streets, and the House of the Seven Gables for the century that came after.
By place — the city, the coast, the far bank
By kind of day — trail, deck, table or dark street
Boston, the harbour, Cambridge, then the ferry up the coast to Salem.
The harbourThe newest Boston and Salem reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
Day Trip from Boston: Explore Hammond Castle Museum
Read our review →
Self Guided “The North End Pizza, Cannoli and Picnic” Solo Walking Tour
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North End Walking Tour with Private Harbor Cruise
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Massachusetts Self-Guided Audio Tour Bundle: 10+ Tours
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Heart of the Freedom Trail – 60 Minute Private Walking Tour
Read our review →
Old Boston: Beacon Hill & Back Bay Walking Tour in French
Read our review →
Private Walking Salem Legends Tour Professional Guide
Read our review →
Pirates and Privateers Walking Tour with Real Pirates Admission
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