Boston, Massachusetts
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One of the nation's earliest urban residential neighborhoods, nearby Beacon Hill was settled in the early 1800s by the city's wealthiest merchants and is today the domain of brick sidewalks, stately town houses, shade trees, and boutiques (the best are on Charles Street.).

4. Hit the shops and galleries along Newbury Street in the Back Bay.
The relatively young Back Bay (a tidal flat before the 1860s) - with its broad avenues of four-story town houses, its grid layout, and its bustle of sidewalk cafes and swank boutiques - recalls Paris. It's still one of Boston's preeminent residential (and favorite walking) neighborhoods. Beacon and Marlborough streets are predominantly residential and contain impressive single-family homes. Commonwealth Avenue is divided by a gracious grassy mall. The best area for whiling away an afternoon is Newbury Street, which is lined with offbeat boutiques and stylish eateries that range from high-end, up by the Public Garden, to funky and somewhat collegiate, down toward Massachusetts Avenue.

5. Explore Harvard Yard.
Puritans settled Cambridge, just across the Charles River from Boston, in 1630 and soon after founded America's first university, Harvard, now a top tourist draw. Walking tours of campus are given daily and focus heavily on tree-shaded Harvard Yard. From here you're steps from such vaunted cultural institutions as the Widener Library, with the country's second-largest book collection; the Fogg Art Museum, whose 80,000 holdings concentrate mostly on European and American painting; the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, which emphasizes Asiatic, ancient Greek and Roman, and Egyptian, Buddhist, and Islamic art; and the mammoth Harvard University Museums of Cultural and Natural History.

Dozens of shops and eateries line the streets around Harvard Square (where Massachusetts Avenue and John F. Kennedy Street intersect). Finish up your exploring with a scoop of the amazingly thick and delicious ice cream at Herrell's, which is known for such flavors as malted vanilla, chocolate pudding, and cookie-dough peanut-butter swirl.

6. Have a progressive dinner along Tremont Street in the South End.
Gentrified steadily over the past two decades, Boston's gay-popular South End neighborhood has become one of the East Coast's great dining destinations, and it's difficult to narrow down the many fine choices to just a few. A solution to this dilemma is to plan a leisurely, progressive dinner at three South End restaurants, sampling one or two dishes at each place. Start at one of the neighborhood's first restaurants to earn major acclaim, Hamersley's Bistro, where you won't go wrong with either the crispy duck confit with beet-walnut salad, or the spicy halibut and clam roast with bacon-braised greens.
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