How was your weekend? I didn't start this site because I thought fleeing DC was a good idea on paper. I really do flee DC quite often. So I thought I'd chronical my adventures here and hopefully help you plan your escape. If you'd like to contribute a weekend story to any of the places we track on fleeDC, please drop us an email.

Jun 23, 2006
Author: BT

Being an avid baseball fan, there are certain stadiums you have to see: Wrigley Field, Yankee Stadium, and Fenway Park. I've already seen the first two, so it was time to head to Boston and scratch Fenway off the list.

My wife and I used FleeDC and found a $150 fair to Boston for a weekend in June. Since we'd been watching the prices for a while - we knew $150 was a great deal and jumped on it immediately.

Tickets to the game were a little harder to come by. As you probably know, Fenway is always sold out. So you're really limited to the secondary market for tickets. We could have just waited and tried buying tickets outside the stadium - but we felt a little more comfortable having the tickets in hand before we got up there.

After much searching on eBay, we finally found some "reasonably" priced tickets on seats.com. I'd never used seats.com before but I had used seatdata.com a lot and they're always advertising there. The transaction was smooth and seats.com never gave me any reason to doubt them.

We arrived in Boston late Friday night. We took public transportation, the T, to our hotel, the Marriott Cambridge. I must say - I really enjoyed this hotel. It's literally right on the T (maybe 20 yards from the hotel entrance). The hotel has also been recently renovated and the rooms are great. New flat panel LCD TVs and the new Marriott beds and linens are the highlights. The only downside is it’s pricey. Luckily, I had a "stay one night get one night free" coupon. That made the average per night price very reasonable.

After a restful night, we set out to explore Boston on Saturday morning. We used the T again and headed downtown. After walking around downtown and around the water front, we needed to head towards Fenway and grab lunch before the game.

A word about the T. I've never been a fan of the DC metro and have gone as far as to openly bash it in a public forum. However, the T is much worse. The T is a mishmash of subway, street cars, and buses. And you never really know which you'll be hoping on from the map (at least until you learn the routes). But what really ticked me off was that they are rolling out a new card based system to replace coins to pay for fairs. The stop the Marriott is located on is one of the first stations to get the new card machines.

So on Saturday morning - we bought a card and stocked it full of cash for all our trips. However, little did we know, they hadn't rolled out the card system throughout the entire T system. The Marriott stop was really the only one we used that accepted it. We looked pretty foolish on our second T ride trying to make our cards work at a gate that didn't accept them. So, we had to buy coins to go along with our now nearly worthless cards. And, to top it all off, trains run even less frequently than the DC metro system... man, I was actually missing the DC metro.

So after a bit of a T adventure, we arrived at our lunch destination, Zaftigs (http://www.zaftigs.com). We'd heard it was great - so we gladly waited 20 minutes for a table. Once seated, my wife and I both had great meals. I can honestly say it was one of the best Ruebens I've ever had. The corned beef was excellent - the sandwich grilled to perfection.

Next it was off to the game and Fenway Park. It didn't take us long to get to the park or find our seats. Once seated, it was amazing to finally see the ballpark which is featured so prominently in print and on television. It's an amazing place.

However, there were a few things that bothered me about the park. The biggest gripe was the amount of getting up and down you have to do to accommodate fans leaving and returning to their seats. I was very surprised at how lacking the fan base's baseball savvy was regarding when you get up during a game. Most seemed to get up whenever - not the universally recognized time of between innings. Fenway also has very long rows - so you end up getting up more often because there are so many people in a row.

Looking around the park - I was also surprised to see how many families with young children were there. Was this Disney World or a baseball game? It really looks like Fenway is more of a tourist destination now. Sure, there was a mixture of local diehards there. They were the ones yelling, "Hey you down front, sit down", whenever someone would stand during an inning. But all in all, I think the park may have lost its baseball purity - diluted by newbie tourist wanting just to see the park and mark it off their Boston to do list. Maybe the World Series win has caused this.

But all in all, the game was great. It went into extra innings and David Ortiz hit a game winning homer in the bottom of the 10th. You can't ask for a much better ending than that.

After the game we met my cousin for dinner at Union Oyster House. It claims to be the oldest restaurant in America. Regardless, it was a great meal and worth the wait. Definitely a unique place to visit.

After dinner we walked around downtown Boston some more. We loosely followed parts of the Freedom Trail stopping at sites along the way. Boston is really beautiful, especially at night. After a long day, we returned to our hotel.

The next morning, we headed back downtown to visit the New England Aquarium. We had a blast there. Highlights included the three varieties of penguins (my wife liked the Little Blues who weigh about 2 pounds fully grown). We also enjoyed seeing the 600 pound sea turtle and all the other aquatic life the aquarium had to offer.

After a quick lunch at the aquarium, we grabbed a taxi for the short trip back to the airport for our return flight. Despite a lot of rain, we had a great time in Boston and look forward to coming back again.

Hotel: Marriott Cambridge
Airports: Reagan National (DCA), Logan Airport (BOS)
Food: Zaftigs (335 Harvard St. Brookline MA) & Union Oyster House (41 Union St. Boston MA)