Travel Tales

A weekend in the heart of the Faneuil Hall area

Location, location, location, plus incredible food and free entertainment

From the patio on our floor we look down on the weekly Haymarket Square outdoor food tents with the new Rose Kennedy Greenway built atop the Big Dig and Boston's famous North End beyond.

The new Millennium Bostonian boutique hotel has it all

By Walter & Patricia Brooks

The view from our seventh floor window at night...

...looks out on a teeming Faneuil Hall & Quincy  Marketplace scene bustling with activiteis including...

..free enterainment outside the historic market building like this stand-up comic in front of Quincy Market.

The rooms also offer views of Faniuel Hall.

Our table at 26 North looked out on the Faneuil Hall scene with horse drawn carriages & the Quincy Market.

The food at North 26 was spectacular and original. Above is the Shellfish Stew and Cod Maedallions.

The Rose Kennedy Greenway separate the hotel in the backgound right with the North End.

...where you can sample an Italian espresso and pastry at Maria's, one of dozens of old world eateries here.

The Haymarket stalls crowd up against the hotel,

The scene on Saturday from our balciny.

It's difficult to believe that after a hundred weekend visits to Boston hotels, we have discovered something really new and different.

Overlooking Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market, the new Millennium Bostonian is the ideal location for discovering all that the historic and unique city of Boston has to offer.

In addition to being brand-new with stylish with spacious guestrooms and suites - the rooms all feature high-quality details such as pillow-top beds, Frette linens and 40-inch high-definition televisions - the property is smack dab in the middle of more exitement than perhaps any other New England hotel or resort.

$24 million renovation

The new Millennium Bostonian has just completed a $24 million renovation including the guestrooms, lobby, restaurant and courtyard driveway entrance.

The hotel's exciting new dining venue, North 26 Restaurant and Bar, features contemporary New England cuisine, and the entire property's design was inspired by the pulse of the marketplace outside offering a contemporary look in a comfortable, 21st. century atmosphere.

The North 26 restaurant looks out directly at all the bustling activities at Quncy Market and Faneuil Hall.

Our dinner at North 26

The dinner menu at North 26 is eclectic with prices below average for a Boston hotel.

Chef Brian Flagg worked for years with Jasper White and Todd English, arguably two of New England's most esteemed food innovators, and his experience tells in his completely original menu here. Every item is a creation of Flagg's, and the execution matches the taste and the service.

Manger Ruben Estrada is a great host, and our server Fernando was witty as well as helpful.

We started with Boston Bean & Pancetta Soup with house cured pancetta, navy beans, leeks and thyme with Swiss chard-pinenut raft, $7, and a Mixed baby greens salad with roasted beets, oranges, pecan-crusted croutons and citrus vinaigrette, $8.

We shared two appetizers, Cornmeal-crusted Oysters, crisp fried with creamed corn and a BBQ ldrizzle, $10 and Pork & Cape Cod littlenecks pan-braised with Black Beans, Cilantro and Chilies, $11. Both were excellent.

For entrees I thoroughly enjoyed North 26's Herb-crusted North Atlantic Cod medallions served over Crab Scallion Cream with Red Beet Risotto & shredded kale, $23.

My wife loved the New England Shellfish Stew with included Lobster, Clams, Mussels, Scallops, Squid & Chourizo in a Saffron Tomato Broth, $27.

The desserts were too outrageous to describe, but here's the menu if you want to guess which excess defeated our resolves to stop eating.

Lunch is a window on this lively world with prices from $11 for sandwiches and $15 for entrees.

After dinner or lunch you can unwind in front of a gas-burning fireplace set before original art installations and a quiet reading area, or walk across the street to explore over 125 shops and restaurants. The property is minutes away from Logan Airport, Boston Harbor, the New England Aquarium, North End restaurants and the Freedom Trail.

Quincy Market, Faneuil Hall

Renovated in 1976, this shopping area has been used as a model in other cities for urban renewal projects.

The original historic Quincy Market building was completed in 1826.

It's a beautiful old granite structure that is 535 feet long, and the style is Grecian-Doric with huge columns at each end. The building was built during Mayor Josiah Quincy's term of 1823-1828, and was named after him.

Samuel Adams Drake quotes Quincy as saying the market: "invested the sluggish town with new life, and brought into practical use a new watchword, Progress." Those words were true in 1826 as the are today.

The central building now houses restaurants, bars, and push-cart vendors with greenhouse style enclosures on both sides. There are boutiques and shops in buildings surrounding the granite centerpiece. Faneuil Hall Marketplace (Quincy Market) is a great location to dine, shop, and people-watch.

There are free events in the area between the market and Faneuil Hall, with artists and entertainers often at the Faneuil Hall end of the building. It's a bustling place, and a very popular tourist attraction.

Faneuil Hall and is bordered by the financial district, the waterfront, the North End, Government Center and Haymarket. It is a well-traveled part of Boston's "Freedom Trail." The Marketplace is a five-minute walk to the New England Aquarium, The Children's Museum, The Old State House, and Paul Revere's House.

Rose Kennedy Greenway & North End

The Rose Kennedy Greenway is a mile and a half long series of parks and public spaces being created atop the Big Dig in which begins near the Millennium hotel and extends to the Aquarium and Children's Museum.

The greenway was named in honor of Kennedy family matriarch Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, and officially dedicated on July 26, 2004,

Two minutes away on the other side of the Kennedy Greenway (which was created above the Big Dig) is the North End, Boston's oldest neighborhood which still retains its 1630's web of narrow streets and is itself next to Boston's harbor wharves where European immigrants arrived in ever-increasing numbers up to the early 20th century.

The North End, in fact, brings to mind the New World phenomenon of an ethnic melting pot. Covering one square mile and always densely populated, it has been home to successive influxes of English, Polish, Russian, Jewish, Portuguese, Irish and ultimately Italian families.

Today it remains an authentic Italian neighborhood with hundreds of great restaurants and coffee houses.

We walked over both days to shop in these unique Italian markets, and had superb espresso and gelato at Maria's Pastry Shop overlooking the Greenway.

 Haymarket Square

Haymarket Square is a busy open-air produce market held each Friday afternoon and Saturday from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. rain or shine, all year long and begins alonside the Millennium Bostonian.

The Haymarket produce market is a real-world contrast to the more upscale offerings of the food shops, restaurants and boutiques of adjoining Faneuil Hall Marketplace next to it.

The market is centered on short, narrow Blackstone Street, and most of the costermongers (vendors) are oldtimers from the North End's Italian community. Some have been working the market for decades, and some families have done it for generations.

Prices are much lower than in supermarkets. Haggling is almost always possible, especially late in the day when prices fall as the sellers would rather sell than pack up, carry away and store what's left on the carts.

It's a colorful scene, and authentic. Most shoppers are not here to take photos but to shop for food for big families and to save money.

The Millennium Boston.