Day Trips from Boston

Lexington and Concord: where the Revolution began

On April 19, 1775, British troops marched out of Boston to seize colonial weapons in Concord. Militia met them on Lexington Green at dawn, and a few hours later, at Concord's Old North Bridge, the colonists fired what Ralph Waldo Emerson called the shot heard round the world. Minute Man National Historical Park preserves the Battle Road between the two towns.

Concord is also America's literary hometown. Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott and Nathaniel Hawthorne all lived here. You can visit Alcott's Orchard House, where she wrote Little Women, and walk around Walden Pond.

Cape Cod, the Islands and the coast

Martha's Vineyard. Take the ferry for a day of gingerbread cottages in Oak Bluffs, whaling captains' houses in Edgartown and some of the prettiest beaches in New England.

Cape Ann. Gloucester, America's oldest seaport, and the art colony of Rockport are about an hour north. Add Hammond Castle, a medieval-style castle built on the cliffs in the 1920s.

Newport, Rhode Island. About 90 minutes south, the Gilded Age mansions of the Vanderbilts and their friends line the ocean along the Cliff Walk.

Fall foliage. From late September to mid-October, the White Mountains of New Hampshire and the hills of Vermont and western Massachusetts put on one of the world's great color shows.