Posts Tagged ‘ Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Oh, the Places You’ll Go! (Boston)

In morning you often see the students with coffee from Au Bon Pain. Students often get lunch at the near-by food court City Place, because there is something for everyone! If the weather is nice you will see groups of students eating outside in the Boston Public Garden. Every week you can meet other students and play sports on the Boston Common.

On Fridays you might see students hanging out at the Sweetwater Café or the Rock Bottom Brewery. The best happy hour deals on food are at McCormick & Schmick’s. Do you love Italian food? Go to the North End! You can be the judge of which bakery has the best cannoli: Modern Pastry or Mike’s Pastry?  When you are in the mood for Japanese food, go to Shabu Zen in Chinatown! It has a great atmosphere and shabu-shabu is always fun group dining experience!

Have you heard of the Prudential Center? This iconic Boston skyscraper has the best views of Boston from the bar/restaurant the Top of the Hub!  The Prudential Center is also one of the main shopping hubs in Boston. You can continue your shopping excursion on the famous Newbury Street! You can stop for a refreshing snack at Pink Berry.

Do you like art museums, but it is not part of your budget? Not a problem! The Museum of Fine Arts is free on Wednesday afternoons after 4pm and the Institute of Contemporary Art is free on Thursday afternoons after 5pm. The unique Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is $5 with your student ID!

On weekends you can head across the Charles River and check out Harvard and MIT. We recommend going on the unofficial “Hahvahd Tour” to hear all the stories that admissions will not tell you! It you want to learn about Boston and see the sights, go on the Beantown Trolley Tour! It is hop on-hop off, so you can explore the areas that interest you the most.

Bostonians loves their sports teams. Cheer from the home team at the Red Sox baseball games, the Celtics basketball games, and the Bruins ice hockey games! The Bleacher Bar overlooks Fenway Park! Across the street, you can see some of the most exciting musicians play at the House of Blues. Other fun music venues are the Paradise Rock Club, the Middle East, and the Brighton Music Hall.

What can you do in Boston?

On the surface, Boston is a very small and quiet city but if you look closely you can also have fun here. In the afternoons you can go to restaurants, if you like trying new food you can find a lot of types of food like Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Venezuelan, Arabic, Mexican, among others. If you want to see the entire city from another view, you can go to the Top of Hub and have a drink while you are looking at this fabulous historical city.

A wintry view of Boston from back in January: The Top of the Hub is located at the top of the tall building on the right hand side of the picture.

In summer, you can take a nice walk and watch all the beauty and nature at the Boston Common and in winter you can go there and ice skate with your friends and have a lot of fun. As you know, Boston is very popular for its universities such as Harvard, MIT, UMASS, Tufts, BU, BC, etc. So you can come here and visit the universities.

Boston Common in January

If you want to know Boston History deeply, you could try going on Boston’s Freedom Trail along which there are 16 famous historical sites. Our teacher Aubrey calls Boston “the heart of the American Revolution.”

If you are interested in art, you can go to Museum of Fine Arts, and on the third Thursday of every month, you can have a cocktail night at Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

At night, if you want to have an American experience, you can go to clubs such as Masa where you can dance to Latin American music and you can also eat Mexican food. If you are under 21, you can go on a bus party and still have fun. There are a lot of nice clubs here where you can have fun but the bad part is that they close at 2 am.

The North End is the Italian neighborhood in Boston, so if you like Italian food or you are from Italy you can come here and feel like you are in Italy.

Boston is famous in Sports! So if you like watching baseball, basketball and ice hockey this is the right place for you. To watch a baseball game you can go to the famous Fenway Park and to watch Hockey and Basketball you can go to TD Garden, which is located at north station.

If you are interested in witch stories you can go to Salem where you can be scared for a day and go the haunted houses and the Salem Witch Museum. And if you are here on Halloween you can see a very interesting festival and win a price if you wear a really good costume.


You can go to Samuel Adam’s factory and have free samples of beer of different kinds of it.

By Mariana Di Campli, Venezuela; Ritta Shaheen, Syria; Valentina Sodano, Italy; and Eun-Hwa Jung, Korea

Pictures contributed by Eun-Hwa Jung

Lalo & Sophie share their love for Boston

Lalo & Sophie share their love for Boston…

SOPHIE Hey guys! We are Lalo and Sophie. We have been hanging around in Boston for almost half a year, not only here but also to different places like New York, Chicago, Washington…
LALO Oh! The two last ones only me… Lalo. About our experience at ELC Boston, what can we tell you? We need to improve our English, don’t we? Well… I’d said it’s the best of both worlds. You will get a great chance to put in practice your English most of the day while meeting students from all around the world. Sometimes I feel I’m forgetting my native language! Getting along is the easiest thing between the classmates and the teachers. You will even see a smile from the School Director… just don’t be late to class.
SOPHIE Boston is a small town; we can’t deny it, but guys you will always find something to do here. It’s also a pretty cosmopolitan where you can try school afternoon activities, including going out to cheap restaurants, museums, the aquarium, walking around the Harvard University, and oh! If you folks are over 21 you can try joining to the Happy Hour.
LALO Boohoo!
SOPHIE Oh yeah! Lalo couldn’t go. He is only 19. But hey! You had fun trying the bowling, ice-skating and the Lady Gaga concert, don’t you? Without mentioning those great deals in the outlets, or that beautiful landscape we enjoyed at the top of Prudential Tower looking the city view by night, or when we chilled at the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum seeing the art collection.
LALO What about the food? Oh my God! Sophie, do you remember that cheesecake we had at the Cheesecake Factory and those scrumptious hamburgers at the Cheers Bar.
SOPHIE Check it out, before you leave, for eating a lobster, the specialty of Beantown, Boston’s nickname.
LALO Wow! It’s funny to think about all the stuff we have done. Crazy, but not as crazy as going to three Red Sox baseball games to watch them lose, or the Bruins failing against Vancouver in that hockey game. We did well in buying those cheaper tickets! The good deal here I would say are the Celtics basketball games. I love them; they are the best. But hey! Please don’t get angry with me, that just my opinion… See you around! … And never wear a Yankees shirt here in Boston. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about!

By Eladio Alcalde, Mexico and Sophie Giraud, France

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~