Just take a walk

Brother and sister Ralph and Marie Polcari run Polcari's Coffee in Boston's North End. The shop is filled with coffees, teas, flours, beans, oils, and spices. JOHN NORDELL / STAFF

Boston's roads are expected to be nearly frozen into automotive gridlock during the Democratic National Convention. That means visitors may be forced to do what they should do anyway: Use their feet to really see the city up close.

A good guidebook or a Google search will yield numerous possibilities for walkers, but here are a few favorites:

Close by the Fleet Center is Boston's North End, with its narrow streets and quaint shops. Lots of delegates will find their way to the area's many excellent restaurants. But leave time for strolling the streets, a mini-visit to Italy. Pick up a cannoli at a bakery and seek out three historical sites here:

• Paul Revere's house, a remarkable piece of 17th century architecture.

• Old North Church, where you'll find that there's much more to "one if by land, two if by sea" than you imagined.

• Copp's Hill Burying Ground, with fascinating old headstones.

They're all on the famed Freedom Trail, 16 nationally significant historic sites connected by a 2.5-mile red brick path that begins at the Boston Common, one of the oldest public parks in the country, and ends in the Charlestown neighborhood, home of the USS Constitution ("Old Ironsides"), the historic American wooden warship of the War of 1812. (A great alternative way to or from "Old Ironsides" is by water taxi from a downtown wharf, which offers great skyline views.)

The Common, just below the State House on Beacon Hill, is crisscrossed with paths, great for stretching your legs and people watching. The adjacent Public Garden's elegant human-powered swan boats are famous, and its flower beds should be in technicolor glory. Look for the statues of a mother duck and her brood from the children's book "Make Way for the Ducklings."

The Charles River Esplanade (it's Hatch Shell is home of the Boston Pops' July 4 extravaganza each year) offers 8.5 miles of paths along the Charles River for walkers and joggers (keep a eye out for bicyclists and in-line skaters whizzing by). Among the attractions are wonderful skyline views, sailboats and scullers on the river, and even a few spots where the water, trees, grass, and birdlife may make you forget you're in the midst of a bustling city.

Or for an even deeper plunge into urban wilds, take an Orange Line subway ride to the Arnold Arboretum, a 265-acre nature preserve in Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood, whose original 1872 mandate was to grow "all the trees [and] shrubs ... either indigenous or exotic, which can be raised in the open air."

— by Gregory Lamb

'Bertha Foster' garden - Dave Hauck	Chat up someone, anyone - Jim Bencivenga	Beantown music scene - J. Johnson
What's foreign found local - Susan Leach	How to walk in Boston - Judy Lowe	Just take a walk - Greg Lamb
Delegates unite - walk! - Greg Palmer	Where to go for some seafood - Daigo Fujiwara	Seek out a quiet moment - Tom Regan
'To think that I saw it on Newbury St.!' - Christina McCarroll	Some antiquarian bookstores of Boston - Tom Toth