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Guides
Boston has 6 Nutcrackers this season, and one is in French
The Nutcracker that Boston knows by heart owes its gentle story to France. As the French Library explains, E.T.A. Hoffmann’s original tale was dark and complicated, and Alexandre Dumas, the author of The Three Musketeers, retold it in 1844 as the fairy tale that became Tchaikovsky’s ballet in St. Petersburg in 1892. This December that story shows up all over Greater Boston in six very different versions. One is a full classical ballet with a live orchestra, one moves the party to present-day downtown Boston, one is narrated in French for kids, one swings to Duke Ellington, and one comes to town for a single night with acrobats and giant puppets. Here’s when and where each one plays, what tickets cost where the venue lists a price, and which ones are made for kids. The big one runs Friday, Nov. 27 through Thursday, Dec. 31 at the Citizens Opera House. Mikko Nissinen’s production premiered in 2012 with hand-painted sets and more than 350 costumes made in Massachusetts and designed by Robert Perdziola. The Boston Ballet Orchestra plays Tchaikovsky’s score at every performance, and 83 students from Boston Ballet School dance alongside the company. Plan on about two hours with one intermission, and dress in layers, because the company keeps the theater warmer than usual for the dancers. Boston Ballet says it is the only official seller of tickets, so buy from its site. Groups of 10 or more can save up to 35%, and there is a sensory friendly performance designed for neurodiverse guests and anyone with sensory sensitivities. José Mateo Ballet Theatre brings its 38th annual Nutcracker to the Strand Theatre from Saturday, Dec. 5 through Sunday, Dec. 20. More than 100 kids ages 6 to 18 dance with professional guest artists every year, and Boston Magazine named it Best Family-Friendly Show in Best of Boston 2020. Mateo choreographed this version to Tchaikovsky’s score in 1988, and the company bills it as affordable. Anthony Williams’ Urban Nutcracker sets its winter scenes in present-day downtown Boston and blends Duke Ellington with Tchaikovsky. Classical ballet is the base, with tap, hip hop, flamenco and jazz mixed in. It plays the Boch Center’s Shubert Theatre from Saturday, Dec. 12 through Sunday, Dec. 20, with 10 performances including weekend matinees, and tickets start at $29 at the box office. The touring Nutcracker! production is in town for exactly one show, Friday, Dec. 11 at 7 PM at the Boch Center’s Wang Theatre. Now on its 33rd annual tour, it adds acrobatics and larger-than-life puppets to the ballet. Tickets start at $66 at the box office. On Wednesday, Dec. 9, the Arpeggione Ensemble plays a miniature Nutcracker at the French Library on Marlborough Street. Thomas Carroll’s arrangement fits Tchaikovsky’s full orchestral score into five musicians playing many more than five instruments, with narration in French from Dumas’s version, English subtitles and projected illustrations, so kids can follow along even if they don’t speak a word of French. Doors open at 5:30 PM for a holiday craft atelier for kids and families, the concert starts at 6 PM, and light refreshments follow. Tickets are $30, or $24 for members and French Library students, and kids under 14 get in at no charge with an adult. Berklee’s Holiday Spectacular on Tuesday, Dec. 8 at 8 PM is a two-part night at the Berklee Performance Center on Massachusetts Avenue. The Gen-Next All-Stars open with arrangements of holiday songs, then the Diamond Cut Big Band plays Duke Ellington’s Nutcracker Suite, his big band take on Tchaikovsky’s music. The box office at 136 Massachusetts Ave. is open noon to 6 PM Tuesday through Friday, plus two hours before the show.
9 Boston spots that feel like a European vacation
Boston has a museum built around Isabella Stewart Gardner’s love of Venice and a public-library courtyard modeled on a Roman palace. Add a French café and dinner above the Public Garden, and you have the makings of a day that feels a little removed from your usual routine. These Boston spots offer some of the pleasures of a European vacation: looking closely at buildings, taking your time over lunch and walking somewhere simply because it is beautiful. Several are free. The paid museum visits and restaurant meals are choices, not prerequisites. Isabella Stewart Gardner’s attachment to Venice shaped the museum she built in the Fenway. She collected architectural fragments in Italy, including columns, windows and doorways, and used them around the courtyard and galleries. The result asks you to look at the building as closely as the paintings. Start with the courtyard’s arches and stonework, then take your time in the surrounding rooms. The museum closes on Tuesdays, so check admission before making it the first stop of your day. Acorn Street’s uneven stone paving and close-set brick houses make a short stretch of Beacon Hill worth stopping to see. The pleasure is in the scale: doors, shutters and windows close enough to notice their differences. Take the photograph from somewhere that keeps entrances clear. People live here, and their front steps are not part of a public photo set. Continue toward Charles Street afterward if you want shops and a place to sit down. Café Sauvage brings a French restaurant to the Massachusetts Avenue end of Back Bay. It is useful for a meal before walking Commonwealth Avenue Mall or continuing down Newbury Street, with daytime and evening service rather than one uninterrupted kitchen shift. Read the current menu for the meal you have in mind and reserve if the café is central to your plans. Mondays are its day off. A slow lunch works better when you have checked that lunch is being served. The Central Library’s courtyard has a particularly clear Italian connection. Its arcaded design draws on the Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome. The covered walkways frame an open courtyard and fountain, giving you somewhere to pause without buying a museum ticket or a meal. Bring a book and use the library as a library. If you also want afternoon tea, book that separately; access to the courtyard does not reserve a restaurant table. Italian bakeries, restaurants and food shops give the North End plenty of reasons to linger beyond its historic sites. Choose a bakery stop, walk the smaller streets around Hanover and Salem, then decide whether you want a full meal. The neighborhood is compact enough that you need not plan every turn. For something to take home, Modern Pastry sells Italian pastries and cookies. Leave room in your bag as well as your afternoon. The comparison with a French boulevard is built into Commonwealth Avenue Mall’s design. Boston’s account of its history credits Arthur Gilman with that approach. Trees, monuments and a central walking path give the avenue a different pace from the traffic on either side. Walk a few blocks from the Public Garden and look across at the houses as you go. The side streets also provide easy exits toward Newbury Street when it is time to eat. Trinity Church on Copley Square is a chance to see Richardsonian Romanesque architecture up close: rounded arches, heavy stonework and a building that holds its own beside much taller neighbors. Inside, John La Farge and his collaborators created decoration that works with the architecture rather than sitting apart from it. Book one of the church’s visitor tours if you want to see the interior. It remains an active church, so sightseeing follows its visitor schedule and services. The Public Garden offers winding paths, planted beds and a lagoon crossed by a small bridge. Walk around the water, then find a bench rather than treating it as a shortcut between shopping streets. The garden itself is a year-round outing, though flowers and activities change with the season. The Swan Boats add a ride in the warmer months. They are closed for the 2026 season, with a return planned for April 2027; use the operator’s schedule before planning around them. Contessa serves Northern Italian food at the top of The Newbury hotel, with views across the Public Garden and Back Bay. Its dining room gives you a reason to dress for dinner, but breakfast and lunch are options too. Pick the meal that suits your budget before reserving. The restaurant lists dishes such as tortellini en brodo and ricotta gnudi among its specialties. Check the menu for your service, and use our rooftop guide if you would rather make the view a drinks stop elsewhere. For an easy afternoon, combine the library courtyard, Trinity Church and Commonwealth Avenue Mall, then choose a meal in Back Bay. Our free and cheap things to do in Boston guide has museum admission options, while our unusual Boston outings give you reasons to try another neighborhood.
Get to know Boston
Why happy hour in Boston is still banned
A bar can knock a few dollars off your oysters at five o’clock. Your martini is another matter. Happy hour in Boston is still restricted by a Massachusetts regulation that prohibits temporary drink discounts, free drinks and promotions built around drinking more for less. The rules apply across the state. Cambridge and Somerville cannot offer an escape route, and calling a promotion an industry night does not create one. As of September 19, 2026, the legislature is still considering a change. A Senate vote in favor of happy hour is not the same as permission for your local bartender to start pouring two-for-one margaritas. Why happy hour in Boston disappeared One of the events behind the ban happened outside the Ground Round in Braintree on September 9, 1983. Kathleen “Kathy” Barry, a 20-year-old woman from Weymouth, died after riding on the hood of a car driven by a friend who had been drinking at the restaurant. Some of the driver’s beers had been prizes in a music trivia contest. Reporting based on interviews with Barry’s family and former state officials describes how her death helped turn alcohol promotions into a public-safety issue. Her parents pressed for stronger measures against drunken driving. Massachusetts introduced the restrictions in 1984, during Michael Dukakis’s administration. They targeted the offers that could encourage someone to drink quickly or keep ordering: free rounds, discounted drinks and contests with alcohol as the reward. The ban dates to the same period as many of the clubs in our look at Boston’s bars of the 1980s. The rules have outlasted quite a few of the rooms. An all-day special is not a loophole The key phrase in the regulation is “same calendar week.” A bar cannot offer a drink for less than its regular price during that week. Selling a margarita for $8 all Tuesday and $12 on Wednesday does not get around that restriction merely because the Tuesday price lasted longer than an hour. A reasonably priced drink is allowed. A temporary discount on that drink is what creates the problem. Those are different things when you are comparing menus, even if both might leave you with a smaller bill. The regulation also prohibits charging a selected person or group less than the general public that day, with an exception for private functions not open to the public. Being a restaurant worker, a regular or the person celebrating a birthday does not, by itself, create an exemption. Bottomless brunch has a problem too The restrictions cover unlimited drinks sold for a fixed price during a set period. That rules out the usual public bottomless-mimosa promotion. Increasing the amount of alcohol without a proportionate price increase is prohibited as well, so a bigger pour is not a substitute for a discount. There are limits on service alongside the pricing rules. A licensee cannot deliver more than two drinks to one person at once. Pitchers of beer or mixed drinks must be served to at least two people. Drinking games and contests that award drinks are prohibited. Some provisions make exceptions for private functions. Buying a ticket does not necessarily make an event private; a publicly advertised offer still needs to comply with the rules. Food specials are a different story The regulation’s exceptions expressly allow free food and entertainment, as well as a drink included in a meal package. A discounted appetizer or oyster offer can therefore be legitimate even when its advertised time sounds like happy hour. Read what the offer actually includes. A food discount does not necessarily mean a cheap evening once drinks, tax and tip arrive. And a meal package is not blanket permission for unlimited cocktails alongside a plate of fries. For an evening built around the room and the drinks rather than a promotion, our Boston speakeasies guide is a useful place to start. The latest attempt to change the rules In July 2026, the Senate passed economic-development legislation containing a local-option proposal for discounted drinks. It would allow participating cities and towns to authorize time-limited discounts, subject to conditions including advance notice and a 10 p.m. cutoff. At this article’s September 19 check, the official bill history still showed House and Senate conference committees appointed on July 30 to resolve their differences. The proposal had not become law. Until that changes, a free birthday drink from the bar remains prohibited. Your friends, however, can buy the round.
Why North Station and South Station have no direct train
Take the Downeaster into Boston and you get off at North Station. Take Amtrak toward New York and you leave from South Station or Back Bay. Getting between North Station and South Station is your problem. Boston made changing trains mean leaving the railway. The names sound like two stops on one line. They are separate terminals for separate networks. A train from Maine does not keep going through downtown toward Rhode Island. The split is older than the Big Dig and older than Amtrak. Nineteenth-century railroads came into Boston from different directions and built their own depots. The two big stations gathered those companies under two roofs. They never joined the northern and southern tracks. North Station, Boston Before North Station and South Station On the north side, several railroads crossed the Charles and piled up around Causeway Street. The Boston & Maine kept its own depot a few blocks south at Haymarket Square. Amtrak’s history of North Station says the Boston & Maine financed the original union station, which opened in 1893. It replaced a cluster of northern terminals. It did not create a through route across the city. That is the distinction that still matters. One roof made it easier to change among trains from the north. It did not connect those tracks to the railroads arriving from the south and west. The geography is blunt. Northern tracks ended at the edge of downtown, on the Charles. The station sat at the end of those tracks. A passenger who needed to keep going had to get off. South Station, Boston South Station solved a different problem South Station opened on New Year’s Day 1899, according to Amtrak’s station history. Five railroad companies formed the Boston Terminal Company and replaced a set of southern and western depots with one arrival hall. Planners even built a two-track loop under the main concourse for electric commuter service that never ran. Amtrak’s account describes a steam-train trial that filled the underground rooms with smoke. The unused level later became a bowling alley. It is now office and storage space. Boston could reuse a failed rail basement. Connecting its two principal terminals was the harder job. South Station was never designed as the south end of one downtown station. Like North Station, it was a collection point. The gap survived both projects. People have been drawing a tunnel for a century The idea of joining the terminals is much older than the Big Dig. The North South Rail Link campaign’s collection of early plans includes a 1914 proposal for an underground connection with a new boulevard on top. Those drawings show how long the problem has been obvious. They are not evidence that the tunnel exists. A map from 1914 and a train you can board are different things, especially with a suitcase. Passengers could once ride between the terminals on the Atlantic Avenue Elevated. That moved people along the waterfront. It did not let a mainline train run through Boston. Transferring riders and joining the tracks are two different fixes. What the tickets actually say Amtrak’s North Station page is plain: only the Downeaster uses North Station. Boston’s other Amtrak trains use South Station and Back Bay. Amtrak does not provide connecting transportation between North Station and South Station. The two are about a mile apart. Read the station name on both reservations before you treat them as a connection. Leave time to exit one building, cross downtown, and find the next train. Weather, luggage, and mobility all change how sensible a walk is. The subway does not solve it with one ride. North Station is on the Green and Orange Lines. South Station is on the Red Line. You can transfer. You cannot stay on the same train. A booking that says Boston has not settled this. North Station and South Station are in the same city. Your ticket does not fill the space between them.