It comes as a disappointment to realize that you can't walk
along Boston's waterfront for any distance, broken up as it
is by over a dozen heavily developed wharfs jutting into the
harbor. However, if you head straight for the sea from Quincy
Market, Columbus Park , next to the ugly Marriott Long
Wharf Hotel , makes a nice place to sit. Faneuil Hall
originally stood at the head of Long Wharf , which stuck out
nearly two thousand feet into the harbor, and was the site of the
final British evacuation on March 17, 1776. Later, a thousand-foot
expanse of the waterfront was filled in, and the Custom House
Tower erected to mark the end of the wharf, though it too now
finds itself inland, as a further thousand feet of new land has
been added.
Out on the water, Boston Harbor Cruises (tel 617/227-4321
or 1-877/733-9425, ; inner and outer harbor $17, inner harbor $8)
from Long Wharf are not all that exciting. The port is nowhere near
as busy as when fishing boats lined the quays three or four deep on
all sides. Instead you pass vast rows of freshly imported Japanese
cars on the quayside, and get a close-up view of the airport. You
can get off one cruise in Charlestown, to see the USS
Constitution , and catch the next one back for no extra
charge.
Close by on Central Wharf, the New England Aquarium (July
& Aug Mon, Tues & Fri 9am-6pm, Wed & Thurs 9am-8pm, Sat
& Sun 9am-7pm; Aug-June Mon-Fri 9am-5pm, Sat & Sun 9am-6pm;
$13) has an outdoor pool of basking sea otters. Inside, the
colossal Giant Ocean Tank, a four-story glass cylinder, holds
sharks, giant turtles and tropical marine life (with an unsettling
emphasis on how "delicious" certain species are). Scuba divers
hand-feed the fish five times a day, and sea lion shows are held in
a floating amphitheater alongside.
If you follow the shoreline past Rowe's Wharf (the base
for the water shuttles to the airport), a short distance before
South Station the Congress Street Bridge leads off to the
left across the Fort Point Channel. Moored to the bridge is the
Boston Tea Party Ship and Museum , damaged by fire in 2001
and closed through the summer of 2002; for hours and admission fee
call 617/338-1773 or visit . This is not the origi nal
Beaver , one of the three ships stormed by patriots in 1773,
but a replica, Beaver II , sailed here from Denmark in 1973.
Neither is it the original mooring, which was on the now-demolished
Griffin's Wharf; instead it's the site of the house where the
conspirators prepared their assault.
On the far side of the bridge, a forty-foot milk bottle ,
which serves as an ice-cream parlor and sandwich bar, marks the
Children's Museum , 300 Congress St (Mon-Thurs, Sat &
Sun 10am-5pm, Fri 10am-9pm; $7, children $6, Fri 5-9pm $1 for all).
The five floors of educational exhibits are designed to entice kids
into learning by doing, with plenty of buttons to push, strings to
pull and tunnels to crawl through, as well as costumes, water toys
and climbing structures.
The Museum of Science , in the Science Park on the
Charles River Dam at the northern end of the waterfront, not far
from North Station (summer daily 9am-7pm; rest of year Mon-Thurs,
Sat & Sun 9am-5pm, Fri 9am-9pm; $11, children $8), has several
floors of hands-on exhibits illustrating basic principles of
natural and physical science. An impressive OMNIMAX cinema takes up
the full height of one end of the building, and the Hayden
Planetarium pays its way with Pink Floyd laser shows and the like
($7.50, children $5.50; call 617/723-2500 for show times).