A highlight of her visit was a stop by the popular restaurant Sonsie, located in Back Bay’s high-traffic Newbury Street shopping district. The talented chef was hankering for some pizza to eat with her hands like a real Italian should, and she selected an absolutely divine looking recipe with a mixture of white cheese, corn, and smoked bacon from the menu.

I caught the episode recently during one of my regular Food Network phases, which is when I watch the channel almost exclusively for days and then forget about it for a few months, before repeating the process all over again. Check out the clip of Giada’s Sonsie segment below. It even includes a bit of history about Boston and the origin of the word “sonsie.”

NOTE: If you require closed captions, you can enable that feature on the video players by clicking the CC symbol in the top right-hand corner.

Post from: The Boston Traveler

You want fascinating? Boston’s got it — in the form of the ever popular Museum of Science, a Boston landmark and member of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums that is home to the Charles Hayden Planetarium, the Mugar Omni IMAX Theater, and dozens of animals. The museum is situated steps from the Boston-East Cambridge border, right at the Science Park stop on the Green Line subway.

With a stated mission “to stimulate interest in and further understanding of science and technology and their importance for individuals and for society,” the museum hosts a number of intriguing interactive exhibits each year, ranging from IMAX movies to displays of live insects and animals to instructional sessions on diverse science-related topics. It even offers a series of virtual exhibits available to everyone, free of charge and around the clock, conveniently via their computer.

The current Museum of Science began as the Boston Society of Natural History in 1830 and later became the New England Museum of Natural History in 1864 after a move to Back Bay. Land was purchased at what is now called Science Park in 1948, and three years later the museum reopened at its new address as the Museum of Science.

The museum’s lengthy list of longtime draws includes the aforementioned Charles Hayden Planetarium and Mugar Omni IMAX Theater, the Theater of Electricity, the Science Live! Stage, Mathematica, and the Children’s Discovery Center. Present exhibits are equally impressive, such as Beyond the X-ray, Dinosaurs: Modeling the Mesozoic, Earth: Inside Out, and the Live Animal Exhibit.

Take a quick video tour of the Museum of Science after the jump and visit the museum’s official website to learn more about its offerings and prices.

Post from: The Boston Traveler

Newbury Street is an eight-block, mixed-use thoroughfare, lined on both sides by many dozens of retail and restaurant businesses housed in gorgeous, historic, renovated 19th-century brownstones. The intricate architecture alone is enough to make one stop and stare before taking scores of pictures and then moving on to the numerous additional stores and businesses on surrounding streets.

Bound on one side by the Boston Public Garden (Arlington T Station) and by Massachusetts Avenue (Hynes T Station) on the opposite side, Newbury Street has a distinct hierarchy of shops. The closer you get to Mass Avenue, as we call the state-named street for short, the quirkier and less expensive the stores become. As a result, the shopping district can accommodate just about anyone, whether a person has upscale or downscale tastes.

Newbury Street is also home to popular attractions that are historic in their own right, such as the original branch of the music chain Newbury Comics. But keep in mind that during peak times — for instance, the warmer months, when school is out and more people are on vacation — the wide and normally comfortable sidewalks can get very crowded.

I personally only visit the location at downtimes, when I know congestion will be limited. If you enjoy experiencing the sights and sounds of thriving, active neighborhoods, however, then peak time is probably the prime time for you to go.

Take a look at a brief video tour of Newbury Street, courtesy of Travelistic, after the jump and visit the shopping district’s official website to learn more about what it offers.

Post from: The Boston Traveler

Billed as Boston’s flagship branch — not to mention Apple’s largest store in the US of A — the shiny shop will offer visitors tons of technological amenities, such as “64 iPod music and video players, 104 Mac laptops and computers, and a third floor dedicated entirely to service that can accommodate 100 customers receiving one-on-one training at the same time,” according to a recent article in the Boston Globe.

The doors to the long and eagerly anticipated retail location will open at 6pm EST on Thursday, May 15, just in time to give the 9-to-5 crowd a few moments to catch its collective breath after the mad dash from offices all around the city. Closing is five hours later, at 11pm.

If you need a little incentive to put some pep in your step when you head over, how about the fact that Apple plans to hand out free limited edition T-shirts to the first 1,500 lucky souls to drop by? I bet they’ll be gone fast enough to make heads spin. Better still, the celebration will continue into and over the weekend, with free workshops and other special events.

Regular hours for the Back Bay Apple Store are Monday-Saturday, 8am to 11pm, and Sunday, 9am to 7pm. Expect large crowds and insanely happy faces, at least during the first few days.

Post from: The Boston Traveler

What can you do, then, when you don’t have a lot of money to spend on hotel accommodations? One option that travelers to the city have been taking advantage of for ages is a reservation at a local hostel.

Although most commonly identified with young people wandering from place to place on extended group vacations, hostels are actually for adults — and sometimes children accompanied by adult guardians — of any age.

Two excellent hostel options for the budget conscious right here in Boston are managed by the well-known non-profit organization Hostelling International (HI). Travelers can select from either the Back Bay or the Fenway location, both of which offer private rooms, in addition to the traditional shared rooms, at a higher but still bargain price.

As of this writing, members of HI who stay at the Back Bay hostel can reserve a single bed in a six-bed room for $27.99–$44.99 per night, while HI members who choose the Fenway hostel can reserve a single bed in a three-bed room for $36–$45 per night.

For those who can’t tolerate or don’t want communal sleeping arrangements, private rooms are available for HI members at a cost of $69.99–$99.99 per night at the Back Bay location and for $96–$119 per night at Fenway. Non-HI members pay just $3 more per night for both types of accommodations if they prefer not to join the organization for a very reasonable and nominal fee.

To learn more about the unique traits of HI hostels in Boston — for example, identification requirements, reservation procedures, check-in and check-out policies, limitations on visits, sharing of common areas, storage and laundry options, perks such as complimentary breakfasts included in the bed prices, and getting the most out of the travel benefits offered to guests — visit the HI Boston Hostels website.

Incidentally, on the one occasion long ago that I had to travel to Boston and secure well-priced sleeping arrangements, I used craigslist and lucked out with spectacular, cheap accommodations by subletting a room for a few weeks. It was in the two-bedroom condo of a woman I didn’t know who was never home — she had gone to work every morning when I got up and came home late each night and went straight to bed — and was about to move out after her former roommate had already left.

The arrangement didn’t bother me because Boston and surrounding areas truly comprise a college environment filled with lots of people renting and subletting housing via the craigslist website. I was traveling with someone then, however, and I also had the benefits of planning far in advance and being extremely familiar with the area beforehand.

If the absence of funds forces you to go the craigslist route, tread very, very carefully. While I’ve never heard of anything horrible happening, it never hurts to be hyper cautious and super aware. Hostels managed by Hostelling International seem like a better, safer, more reliable, and less stressful bet.

Post from: The Boston Traveler

Lots of people in the Hub are excited about one major thing these days — the gigantic, allegedly 21,350-square-foot flagship Apple Store currently under construction at 815 Boylston Street in the historic Back Bay area of Boston.

A February 2007 Boston Globe article speculated the massive retail location will give eager Apple connoisseurs, fanboys, and fangirls three or more floors (the company is super secretive about forthcoming branches, so reported numbers differ) of opportunities to browse, sample, and hang out, all in a relaxing, glass-motif retail environment that encourages loitering, er, lingering.

Although no definite opening date has been released as of this writing — or at least not one that I know of — the picture above leaves no doubt that Apple fanatics will be able to get their hip Back Bay fix very, very soon. Since the store’s opening has already been delayed several times in the past, for the sake of the hordes of devout Apple worshippers, I hope that means in 2008.

Folks are already loving the temporary Fenway Park Green Monster façade. Check out a couple of additional photos after the jump, as well as even more construction-phase images at The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

Post from: The Boston Traveler