A River Runs Through It: Boating on the Charles - Boston MA Romantic Getaway

Preview: London has the Thames, Paris the Seine. Boston has the Charles. Many of the world’s great cities have grown up along rivers, and their embankments evoke the romance of great deeds and visions where land and water meet. Because the Charles was not tamed by dams until the early twentieth century, Boston always kept a step back from the river, its buildings raised above the waterline. That strategy reserved a glorious strip of land on each bank. The sedate broad basin of the lower Charles that flows slowly past Back Bay and part of Beacon Hill was girdled with parks and walkways to rival the great river cities of Europe. It bustles with small sailboats and Olympic rowing shells that seem to skim along the surface like waterbugs. Yet only a short distance upriver, the Charles shows a character barely altered by human artifice. Great herons stalk the shallows, and a water world rolls past a landscape where alder and swamp maple have reclaimed the banks. Both are at your command—the proud water at the edge of a city and the hidden coves and inlets that remind you why the first European settlers called this a New World. This chapter is a true insiders’ guide revealing great nightlife, romantic hotels, intimate dining venues, secluded retreats, and much more.
© Copyright Patricia Harris & David Lyon published by The Globe Pequot Press all rights reserved.


Duration: Two days and one night
Best Time to Go: April through October
This travel guide comes from:
Romantic Days and Nights in Boston Guide Book