Boston is a great city , we head there once or twice a year for just a quick overnight trip. We go for the food and fun. As many times as we have been there, we always have a great time and find something new to check out.
If I'm ever remotely near a location I will be eating there. Some of the stuff they pull out of that oven... o m g Oh and I don't get caught up in which is best, just which I can put in my belly!
I apologize in advance, but since this has turned into somewhat of a "Northern food" thread, and doughnuts have even been mentioned... All through Robert B. Parker's Spencer novel series, he talked often about stopping at Dunkin Doughnuts and getting corn muffins, sometimes sharing with his somewhat-uppity girlfriend. Spencer was based in Boston roughly in the 70s-90s, and since there seem to be quite a few Northeastern folks here - do the Dunkins up there still serve corn muffins? None of the Dunkin folks I've asked down here have ever heard of that, but I don't know if they just aren't senior enough to remember or if they were never served down here at all. They look at me like I'm crazy for asking, and to me it does seem strange that a doughnut shop would serve what was sometimes considered (generally) to be food of the less fortunate, although I sure do love good cornbread! Again, I'm sorry to interrupt the thread, if only slightly, but I've wondered about this for years and it seemed like some of y'all might shed some light on this. Thanks for your patience, either way!
Even if you walk into a DD and find them on the shelf they will not be on the menu with a price. Plus, don't bother telling anybody because they won't believe you, unless they were with you.
Huh, so they do exist! Thanks for your reply! Is that just a Massachusetts thing, or a New England thing? From the silence on my question I assumed nobody else had heard of it either. I thought maybe it was just another one of Parker’s idiosyncrasies.
Did the OP ever make it to the northeast or are you still planning your trip? I was born in MA, grew up in NH/ME since the age of five and went to college in MA, NH and ME. I'm a New Englander through and through. Here's my two cents. CT Most new Englanders don't even consider CT, especially western CT part of New England. I've never found anything in the state particularly interesting and would skip it if I were you. RI The mansions in Newport are kinda cool but that's about it. Providence is an ugly, dirty place full of people with bad accents who don't know how to drive, and the whole city smells like cat pizz. VT Very beautiful state but not a lot going on unless you like skiing or smoking dope. It might be worth driving through if you like seeing the type of quaint small town new england from picture books, covered bridges etc etc and ODing on maple syrup/maple syrup related products. The queechee gorge is kinda cool and the Calvin Coolidge homestead is also a nice stop for history buffs. MA I have mixed emotions about MA stemming mostly from the fact that the entire state is pretty much diametrically opposed to my political views and massholes can often be quite arrogant, thinking that their home is the center of the universe. Boston is indeed a great city to visit and there's a ton of history and culture there that you won't find anywhere else in new england, at least not in that volume. You'd mentioned seeing the historical sites. There's a lot of that in Boston but you may also want to check out Salem which has the Salem witch museum and a few other witch trial related historical sites. There's also the Lizzie Borden house in Fall River if you're interested in seeing where she killed her father and stepmother with an axe. You could go to the top of the prudential building in Boston which has an observatory that looks out over the surrounding area 360 degrees. The MA coast has some very nice spots but also some very bad places too. It can be very crowded depending on what time of year you go. Cape Code is nice but extremely crowded in the summer. NH My home sweet home. First off our seacoast kinda sucks. It's the smallest coast in the country at something like 16 miles long. Portsmouth is nice but Hampton beach is a dump. I wouldn't really bother with it. But we have the white mountains which are beautiful. You could drive up the Mt' Washington auto road but I wouldn't recommend it because on the way up it can be quite nerve wracking driving on the edge of a mountain with very steep drops just feet away from your tires. That may not bother you but I don't care for it. Also on the way down you're pumping your brakes and pulling over nonstop. It's a real pain in the azz. Better to pay the fee to take the shuttle up/down and let someone else deal with that. There's a place in my hometown, Salem, called American Stonehenge which is a bunch of very, very, very old man made granite stone structures in the woods that no one knows the origin of. There's a sun dial, root cellars and what appears to be a sacrificial table with a groove to catch the blood carved into it. There's the Shaker Village in Caterbury, the USS Albacore in Portsmouth, the WW2 museum in Wolfeboro. ME My second home and one of the most beautiful places on earth. The coastline of Maine truly puts the rest of the New England coast to shame. The are so many lighthouses, historical forts, beautiful harbor towns, sandy/rocky beaches et etc to see. You can go to Acadia National park (not in the summer though because it's too crowded) and take the auto road up Mt. Cadillac. There's a suspension Bridge in Buxton that has an elevator in it and you can go to the top and see the beautiful view. Portland is a great city to visit despite the homeless problem getting worse. You could go to the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath take a cruise down the river after learning about Maine Maritime history. I don't know if Ray still works there but if you get him as your guide you're in for a treat. He's about 80-90 years old and knows almost everything about the history of Maine. Fort Foster in Kittery is an absolutely beautiful spot to hang out with a pier that you can walk out on and view NH on the other side of the water. You could drive up Mt' Agamenticus in York for some nice views. Maine Botanical gardens in Boothbay is a great place to visit in late spring/summer. So much more to see in Maine but I can't list it all obviously. There are a lot of very good restaurants in Maine to get clam chowder/seafood and a lot of tourist traps that will charge you an arm and a leg for crappy food. New England Fishmongers in Kittery has some of the best fried seafood I've ever had, not sure about their clam chowder, my wife likes that more than I do. Best Lobster rolls would be the lobster shack in Ogunquit but they're only open for summer season. York 54 in York has very good pizza.
It's been my experience that people who live in Western CT associate themselves more with the NYC area than they do Boston or the rest of New England.
Do you mind if I ask what part of the country you're coming from? The northeast/New England has very distinct seasons and the time of year you come will have very distinct weather and different things going on. In my opinion March or April would be the worst time of the year to visit due to the fact that the weather sucks (it's not really winter and it's also not really Spring) and there's less stuff going on. Strictly from a weather standpoint September is probably the best time to visit because it's still warm and sunny but the humidity has died down a little but. Also visiting in September means most people have already had their summer vacations so it's a little less crowded. Late May and June are also nice times to visit.
