36 Hours In Boston (& Cambridge)

Have you ever seen the new New York Times series, 36 Hours in (Insert Name of City)? It's a bunch of city guides for when you only have 36 hours to spend in a city and I absolutely love them.


This past weekend I coincidentally spent exactly 36 hours in Boston/Cambridge visiting the lovely (and brilliant) Daphne. It was pretty rainy the whole time, but we still saw lots and ate our way through the entire city, which is perhaps the best way to experience any city in my hungry opinion. ;)

As for my Friday night bus trip to Boston, it was honestly pretty awful between this + crazy Columbus Day Weekend traffic, which got me into Cambridge really late/past the time we could do anything. Saturday, however, was super busy and fun.

In the morning, we brunched with the other PhD's on Daphne's floor. I was totally the dumbest girl at the party, but had some great conversations. It's really funny how they're all so smart, but just as clueless as I am about what each other study. Some studied subjects like high energy physics or chemistry, but one girl studied the inner ear! I wish I asked her more. She probably had some inspirational story for how she ended up studying that. I'm pretty sure you don't just decide to study the inner ear out of the blue!

After brunch, Daphne played tour guide in the rain and showed me all around Harvard's beautiful campus. We even caught a few minutes of a Harvard vs. Cornell football game from afar (which was nice, even though Ivy League football is pretty pathetic).

Harvard also has some awesome libraries. The one we ventured into had one of the coolest ceilings I've ever seen (it was engraved with each zodiac symbol) and housed a Gutenberg Bible!

After Cambridge, the next stop on the tour was Boston!

Since it was so rainy, we spent much of the afternoon at Harpoon Brewery. Tours were sold out, but you could still go in and get beer and pretzels, which we obviously did. Both were soo good! Pumpkin beer + pretzels with IPA cheddar/red pepper aioli sauces = heaven. The brewery was also killing it with their playlist. Hits from the early 2000's and some good alternative rock. So perfect.

When we headed out of the brewery, the weather had cleared so we walked around the waterfront.

We stumbled upon the Boston Haymarket which has the cheapest produce in the city because it's the stuff that supermarket's can't sell because it's almost past its prime. We bought all these strawberries for a dollar. One dollar! It kind of felt illegal!


After the Haymarket (with all our strawberries + some red peppers and persimmons in tow), we walked through Quincy Market and then realized we should get cannoli's from Mike's Pastry even though we had no clue how far away it was. We decided we'd go if it was 3/4 of a mile or less away...

Thankfully it was only a few blocks away so we finished the day up at Mike's Pastry for cannoli's, which you seriously cannot pass up if you go to Boston. We ended up eating them on the train back to Cambridge (with some of the strawberries) because we're classy ladies ;)

That night we grabbed some delicious vegan food with Amie DT's lovely British friend Holly.
Oh my. It was so delicious! I got the Green Goddess bowl and an Island Alive smoothie. Can you really go wrong with goddesses and islands?! I think not!

And this much wraps up Saturday. On Sunday, we grabbed a quick and delicious brunch and I was soon heading back to New York.

On that note, thanks again for having me and playing tour guide around Boston/Cambridge (and knowing all there was to know about the public transit and hooking me up with tons of delicious food), Daphne! I hope to be back soon. xo