Four miles of red brick, and a witch trial half an hour north.
Which Freedom Trail walk keeps moving. What the harbor cruise costs once dinner is on it. Whether Salem is worth a whole day in October. Reviews of the tours you can book in Boston.
The trail, the amphibious bus, the Tea Party ships, and Salem.
Four bookings a first Boston trip is built around. What each one costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The first morningFreedom Trail History Small Group Walking TourThe brick line from Boston Common to the North End, in a group small enough to hear the guide. Go before the school parties reach Faneuil Hall.
02The one on wheelsBoston Duck Boat Sightseeing City Tour with Cruise Along Charles RiverA wartime amphibious truck that drives the city then drops straight into the Charles. Silly, and the best hour of orientation you can buy.
03The Revolution, stagedBoston Tea Party Ships and Museum AdmissionTwo rigged brigs at the Congress Street bridge, a crate of tea over the side, and the museum that explains why it mattered.
04The Salem dayHistory and Hauntings of Salem Guided Walking TourGallows Hill, the Burying Point and the streets between them, told without the gift-shop version. Half an hour north on the commuter rail.
Boston is walkable. Salem and Cambridge are one train ride out.
A downtown you can cross on foot, a witch-trial town up the North Shore, and two campuses across the river. Three bases, and the best day out in each.
Boston tells ghost stories. Salem tells court records.
The biggest evening draw in either town, and the two of them run it very differently. Three kinds of night out, what it costs to join each, and which town to do it in.
Boston’s red brick line, and the people who make it make sense.
Two and a half miles from Boston Common to Bunker Hill, sixteen sites, free to walk and largely unexplained if you do it alone. The guided versions differ on pace, on how far up the trail they actually get, and on whether the guide is in a tricorn hat.
The Boston tours more travellers take than any other.
Every Boston review we have written →The ones that fill first across the whole city, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
History and Hauntings of Salem Guided Walking Tour
Walk Salem with a local historian through the Witch Trials Memorial, Essex Street, McIntire District, Ropes Mansion, and Witch House. Choose daytime or lantern-lit evening departures. Expect lively storytelling, modern witchcraft, ghost lore, and outdoor stops only.
From · $36
Read our review →
2
Boston Duck Boat Sightseeing City Tour with Cruise Along Charles River
from $59
3
Freedom Trail History Small Group Walking Tour
from $35
4
Boston Hop-On Hop-Off Trolley Tour with 13 Stops
from $52
5
City Cruises Whale Watching Cruise
from $85
6
Salem’s Best Ghost Tour
from $30
7
Boston Duck Tour: The Original and World-Famous
from $60
8
Harvard University Campus Guided Walking Tour
from $23
Salem is a half-hour train ride and a very strange afternoon.
Nineteen people were hanged here in 1692 and the town has been arguing about how to tell it ever since. You get the court record, the ghost walk and the Hocus Pocus route, sometimes from the same guide. October is a different town again: book weeks out or do not bother.
Every Salem day out →
The skyline only makes sense from the harbor.
Boston was a port before it was anything else, and the waterfront still runs on hulls: narrated sightseeing loops past the Navy Yard, schooners under sail out of Long Wharf, sunset boats that leave as the towers go gold. Prices swing on whether food comes with it.
- 1City Cruises Boston Historic Sightseeing Harbor Cruisefrom $46
- 2Boston Harbor Sunset Cruisefrom $31
- 3Boston Harbor Sunset Cruisefrom $54
Hanover Street eats better than the whole Seaport put together.
Six blocks of Italian Boston squeezed between the trail and the harbor: pastry counters with a queue at nine in the morning, salumerie that predate the tunnel, and the lobster roll argument that never ends. Most food walks fold in the Old North Church, so you get the history whether you wanted it or not.
- 1Boston Food & History: Pizza, North End & Freedom Trailfrom $90
- 2Boston North End Food Tour of 6+ Tastings, Cannoli, Lobster Rollfrom $119
- 3Boston’s North End Food Tour: Italian Flavors & Heritage Walkfrom $70
What a day out in Boston actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. A good share of the best days in this city cost less than parking downtown.
Guided walks, trail tours, Salem night walks and single-site admissions.
The full afternoons: harbor cruises, duck boats, food walks, ballpark tours.
Private guides, chartered sails and the day trips that run down the coast.
Three things you can only do between Boston and Salem.
Old towns and good dinners exist everywhere. A four-mile brick line through a revolution, a courthouse record of 1692, and a street of pastry shops built by one wave of migrants do not.
The Freedom Trail
A line of red brick and granite laid into the pavement in 1951 to stop tourists getting lost between the Revolutionary sites. It runs from Boston Common to the Bunker Hill Monument and passes the meeting house where the Tea Party was argued, the Old State House balcony, and two burying grounds full of names you will recognise. The brick is free. The part worth paying for is somebody who knows which stops to skip.
- 1Freedom Trail History Small Group Walking Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 6,450 reviews
- 2Boston Freedom Trail Walking Tour with Costumed Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,531 reviews
- 3Boston Food & History: Pizza, North End & Freedom Trail★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,772 reviews
The Salem Witch Trials
Between February and September 1692 the Salem courts jailed around two hundred people and executed twenty. The good tours work from the surviving depositions and the actual geography: the meeting house site, the jail, Proctor’s Ledge where the hangings happened, and the memorial benches beside the Burying Point. It is a short walk and a very long hour.
- 1The Salem Witch Walk★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,301 reviews
- 2Wicked Awesome Tours: Witch Trial History and Salem Haunts!★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,032 reviews
- 3Best Salem Witch Trials Historical Walking Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 743 reviews
The North End
Italian families arrived here in the 1860s and never really left, which is why a neighbourhood of colonial lanes now smells of espresso and fried dough. The walks move between a pastry counter, a salumeria, a pizza window and usually a cannoli argument, all inside six blocks that also happen to hold Paul Revere’s house.
- 1Boston Food & History: Pizza, North End & Freedom Trail★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,772 reviews
- 2Boston North End Food Tour of 6+ Tastings, Cannoli, Lobster Roll★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,404 reviews
- 3Boston’s North End Food Tour: Italian Flavors & Heritage Walk★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,322 reviews
Four Boston bookings that run on somebody else’s calendar.
Most of this city can be sorted the night before over a beer on Boylston Street. These four cannot: they run on a ball club’s fixture list, a ferry timetable, a timed entry slot and a season that closes when the harbor gets cold.
- 01Boston Fenway Park: Guided Ballpark Tour with OptionsBallpark tours run around the schedule. On a home game day the route is shortened or pulled entirely, and the good slots go early.
- 02Boston Duck Boat Sightseeing City Tour with Cruise Along Charles RiverThe amphibious boats need open water, so the fleet runs spring to late autumn and stops when the Charles turns. Winter visitors do not get this one at all.
- 03Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum AdmissionEntry is by timed slot with a cap on each sailing of the reenactment, and the late afternoon slots go first.
- 04Boston to Martha’s Vineyard Day Trip with Optional Island TourThe day trip is built on a ferry crossing, so the schedule is fixed, the season is short and a bad forecast can cancel the boat rather than delay it.
Boston weather takes a day off your trip. Plan the indoor one.
A nor’easter in March, a downpour in July, a February morning that makes the Common unwalkable: this city hands you at least one day you cannot spend outside. The answer is the same every time. Book something with a roof, a ticket and a start time.
By place - downtown, the North Shore, across the river
By kind of day - walk, boat, plate or ghost story
Trail, harbor, North End, Salem: the order most first visits end up in.
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