After moving back home in 2019, our desire to travel continued. We took the children to Pennsylvania the summer of 2020, which included a few days in Philadelphia. While in Philly, we went to a Phillies game and had one of the best days ever. This sparked a desire to see other MLB games in big cities, and since then we have been to DC for the Nationals, Atlanta for the Braves, and Chicago last summer to see the Cubs. Since I have never been to Boston, Laurence and I agreed that Boston and a trip to Fenway Park would be the best way to kick off summer 2024.

As most know, I thrive on budget travel. I believe you can travel well and not spend a fortune. When looking into flights, we saw that Breeze airways (which literally started flying out of GSP two weeks before our trip) had a direct flight from Charleston to Providence, Rhode Island. Providence is about an hour, depending on your transportation mode, to Boston. Since neither one of us had ever been to Providence, we decided to spend one night there and three nights in Boston.

Wednesday, May 29

We took the 9:30 a.m. flight out of Charleston. I have learned with the budget airlines that it is best to get the earlier, as opposed to later flights, so avoid a possible cancellation. I was really impressed with Breeze! The flight was smooth and we arrived in Providence, on time right before noon.

My favorite hotel deal finder is still Hotwire.com. I know there is probably something else I should be using at this point, but I love the gamble of not knowing exactly where you are staying until you hit that purchase button. We lucked out and got a great deal on a night at The Graduate, which I’ve stayed in in Nashville before and love how funky these hotels are! They had our room ready early, which was SO SPACIOUS by the way, we got situated and headed out for the afternoon.

I have never had any interest in knowing much about Brown University, and of course, my children have zero desire to walk around college campuses, especially ones they do not know anything about. But Laurence and I wanted to see the campus, so we breezed through the main part quickly before everyone, of course, was already tired and hungry. We found a hole in the wall diner which to everyone’s delight, served breakfast all day. We refueled with chocolate chip pancakes for the kids and set out to get to the zoo, something we had promised the kids all day we would make it to. Well, rookie move, I did not check the hours of the zoo. We arrived at 3:15 only to find out they were closing at 4. There was no point in paying for expensive zoo tickets for a 45 minute visit, so we had to break the news. Thankfully one out of the three took the news well and the other two pouted and made us fully aware of their disappointment. Thankfully, the Rogers Williams Park had other activities besides the zoo, on the grounds. They had a carousel, which was right next to a playground and ice cream shack. There was also a little pond where you could rent swan boats to take out for a half hour. I actually ended up enjoying these activities instead of the zoo!

That night, we walked from our hotel to Federal Hill, which was an area heavily settled by Italian Immigrants. Because of this, the area is home to loads of Italian restaurants. Of course, everyone was a little tired and Laurence and I did not have a plan of where we wanted to eat, even though we had read reviews of places. So after a little arguing back and forth, we settled on drinks and an app at a really cool outdoor spot, and ate dinner at was a much more kid friendly Sicillia’s Pizzeria, which was AMAZING! We walked back to the hotel, grabbed a drink at the bar, and went to bed.

Thursday, May 30

The awesome thing about Providence is you can take the commuter train to Boston! So if you did not want to stay in Providence, you could fly in to Providence and take a train immediately to Boston. The train station was a 10 minute walk from our hotel. I thought the train left at 9:35, but I was looking at the wrong schedule. Thank goodness was got there a few minutes early because it was actually leaving at 9:15. We made it in the nick of time! The ride on the commuter train was 1.5 hour. I think you can take faster trains, but this was fine for us! We arrived in Boston, at South Station around 10:45 and it was pouring rain! Again, we lucked out with about a less than 10 minute walk to the hotel from the station. We had another hotwire.com home run with The Intercontinental Hotel, which was a FANTASTIC location! They, as well, had our room ready for us early and we were able to get settled in and ready to go.

The first stop was lunch, since we were not able to eat breakfast before leaving Providence. Since it was raining, we had to do an indoor activity for our first day, so we went on one of the recommendations from people and headed in the direction of the Museum of Science. We found an incredible food hall, Boston Public Market on the way. These food halls are the best for indecisive families like us because everyone can get exactly what they want! After a delicious meal of sushi and clam chowder for me, we spent 4 hours at the Museum and I would highly recommend it to others, especially on a rainy day and with a range of ages in kids. We came back to the hotel, let the kids swim (awesome indoor pool BTW) and headed to dinner at The Green Dragon Pub. According to our friend Cabe, who gave us some awesome recs for the area, “This is a spot where Paul Revere held meetings with the other big-name Sons of Liberty; Samuel Adams, John Adams, John Hancock, Daniel Webster, et al. The Boston Tea Party was planned here, and it’s a commonly held belief that the plans for the invasion of Lexington and Concord were overheard in this pub, spurring Paul Revere’s famous ride.”

Friday, May 31

We woke up to INCREDIBLE weather on our second day in Boston. We found another food hall for breakfast, which is great in a family like ours, where nobody can agree on what they want to eat. Day two was our “Freedom Trail” day. We knew, from talking to others, that we did not want to do the entire trail, so we just picked a few highlights we knew we wanted to see. Our first stop was the Boston Tea Party museum. I should have planned a little better and bought tickets earlier in the day because when I got on the afternoon before, the earliest time slot was 11:30. It worked out fine, but it did provide for a slower morning.

The Boston Tea party museum was neat to see and the kids loved it. It was very interactive, with people in character and gave a good overview of the event and those involved. It took about an hour and 15 minutes total, so when we got out at 12:45, it was time to find a spot to eat again. The thing I really loved about Boston is how walkable it is. Everything seemed to be within a mile range, so we walked everywhere! One recommendation was to find a sandwich in Beacon Hill and eat in the park. This sounded great in theory, but we had no idea where to find this sandwich and should have done some research before trekking over with hungry kids. After a few choice words and a 15 minute google search, we found a precious grocery store that sold sandwiches that were incredible! And again, it was a small grocery so even my two pickiest eaters, who do not eat sandwiches, were happy with their choices. And since everyone was hungry, we decided to just eat right there in the shop, which was perfect. I would have loved to walked back to the Boston Public Gardens to see the Make Way for Ducklings sculpture or see the swan boats, but since we had a late start and still wanted to do some of the historical sites, we had to move on. We popped into incredibly adorable bookstore in Beacon Hill, that my sister recommended, and if you need to see something that will charm your socks off, popping in here will do that! We bought everyone a book and headed on to see Paul Revere’s House.
Paul Revere’s house was back in the North End. We made a pit stop at Bova’s Bakery to grab a cannoli and some other treats. The house was a quick tour, about 15 minutes total and was only $6/adults and $1 for children to walk through. Although it does not take long, I think is worth walking through. After that, we walked over to the Old North Church to snap a pic in front of. This is the infamous steeple where Paul hung the lantern from notify of the Red Coats. It is a small fee to go inside the church, but by this point, everyone was tired, so we trekked on back to the hotel, with a quick pit stop by a carousel of house, to rest some tired legs! We headed back to the North End for a delicious Italian dinner at La Famiiglia Giorgios. There were SO many options of Italian places, so I don’t think you could go wrong!

Saturday, June 1

Our last day in Boston was another gorgeous day! We headed back to the Boston Public Market for breakfast…bagels for us and of course, crepes for the children. There was an amazing playround across the street from the Boston Public Market and since we had some time, we let the kids play before our next tour. We had a 11:30 Duck Boat tour. If I were to give advice, I would highly recommend doing the Duck Boat tour the first day of your trip. However, the weather was so yucky our first day and then when we went to buy tickets that night, they were sold out. So I’d check weather the week before you go and go ahead and book tickets. The kids LOVED the duck boat tour, and it was a great way to get an overview of the city. Again, there were some spots that I was like, “I wish I’d known this was here” because we did not have time to go back and walk through. However, there will be other visits and I feel like we squeezed in about as much as we could! We took the Duck tour from the aqariuam, since it was the closest to our hotel, but it also takes off from the Museum of Science and The Prudential Center. If you took off from the aquarium, do could always then do the aquarium after, or vice versa! Same with the Museum of Science.

After the Duck Boat tour, we headed to the Union Oyster House for lunch. This was another recommendation from Cabe as a good place to eat, specifically for lunch. I ordered the fish and chips and a Sam Adams…trying to be as Boston as I could get! 🙂 We had some time after lunch to go back to the hotel and rest before the Red Sox game.

The Red Sox game was at 4:10. We took an Uber from downtown, and go there before the game to buy some gear for everyone. We had amazing seats in the outfield, but I will note, it was in direct sunlight. So on a hot day like we had (which definitely beats a rainy day) it was HOT! But despite the heat, we had a BLAST and the day was topped off with a Red Sox win! We took an Uber back to the North End for dinner (can you tell we really loved this area?) and had one last incredible meal at Antico Forno.

We did not really think through Sunday as well as we should have. Ideally, we planned to take the commuter train back to Providence, then catch an uber to the airport from the train station. However, the commuter train did not run as often on Sunday and the 10:15 time would have put us there too late. So, we got an Uber XL from Boston to Providence, which was $120…not awful for all 5 of us, and it would have been cheaper with a smaller uber. I think there may be another train to get back to Providence, but we did not research this too well. We had a great uber ride back, with the driver taking us on a little detour to ride by the Patriots stadium…this was a huge hit for my NFL children!

I still cannot get over how much fun this trip was for our crew! I was blown away by how easy Boston was to navigate, how clean it was and how friendly the people were. There was also a really good mix of history and fun to keep everyone entertained. I am thrilled that Breeze now is flying out of GSP because we will be back to Boston sooner than later!

Itinerary in a Nutshell

Wednesday May 29

• 9:30 am- Depart CHS to PVD
• 11:30 am- Arrive in PVD and take Uber to The Graduate (15 minute drive)
• Check in around 12:30
• Walk to Brown University and walk through campus
• Lunch at Louis’ Restaurant
• Back to hotel to refresh
• Uber to Roger Williams Park to go to the zoo. (We should have flip flopped this with the Brown walk through. Zoo closed at 4 and we arrived at 3:15. Stayed in the area and did the carousel, swan boats and got ice cream.
• Uber back to hotel to get ready for dinner
• Walked to Federal Hill. Drinks at Cassarinos, dinner at Scillios.

Thursday, May 30

• Depart hotel at 8:45. (We should have left at 8 and grabbed breakfast.)
• 9:15 am- Commuter train from Providence Train station(10 minute walk from hotel) to Boston South Station. No ticket needed ahead of time. Get on the train and pay on the train.
• 10:30 am- Arrive at South Station and check into the Intercontinental. The Intercontinental was a 6 minute walk from the station.
• 11:30 Lunch at the Boston Public Market. 1/2 mile walk from hotel. This was on the way to the Museum.
• Arrive to the Museum of Science around 1. A little over a mile from the hotel.
• Back to hotel to swim and refresh around 4.
• Dinner at The Green Dragon.
• Back to hotel around 9. Laurence and I went out for drinks at great bar right next to hotel named Nebos.

Friday, May 31

• Breakfast around 9:30 at High Street Food Hall.
• 11:30 The Boston Tea Party Museum
• 12:45- walk to Beacon Hill through Boston Public Garden. Grab a sandwich from DeLuca’s grocery store. (We ate at the grocery, but in hindsight, would have walked back to the park.)
• Walked up through Beacon Hill. Stopped at the Beacon Hill bookstore.
• Walked to the North End. Stopped for a pastry at Bova’s Bakery.
• Visit Paul Revere’s house. (Only about 20 minutes to do the tour.)
• Walked over to the North Church. (We did not want to pay to go inside, so just walked around.)
• 4:30ish or 5- Walked back to hotel. Brief stop for a carousel ride at the Greenway Carousel. Quick refresh before dinner.
• 6:30ish- headed back to the North End for an Italian Dinner. Stopped by La Famiiglia Giorgios to put our name on the list. Went for a drink at Libertine across the road. Dinner around 8.
• Back home around 9:30. Laurence and I out for drinks at Nebos.

Saturday, June 1

• Breakfast around 9:00 at Boston Public Market
• Quick play at the playground across the street after breakfast.
• 10:30- back to hotel to pack everything up to get ready to leave the next day.
• 11:30- Duck Boat tour. We left from the aquarium location, which was about a 12 minute walk from our hotel. (Wish we did the Duck boat the first day, but did not because of weather.)
• 1:15 Lunch at The Union Oyster house
• Back to hotel around 2:30 for a quick rest. We could have gone onto the Fenway from here, if we wanted to get there early.
• 3:15- got an Uber to Fenway Park. Ran into shop to grab Red Sox gear and made it into the stadium in time for the start of the game.
• 4:10- Start of Red Sox game
• After game, we got an Uber back to the North End for dinner at Antico Forno. We made an 8:15 reservation.
• Back home around 9:30. Laurence and I out for drinks at Nebos.

Sunday, June 2

• Depart hotel around 8:30 and took an Uber from Boston to PVD. We could have left later because we ended up at the airport nearly 3 hours before departure. We did not think through that traffic would not be bad on a Sunday morning.
• 12:56 Depart PVD to CHS