Delegates unite - walk!

Kim Andrews and her son Trevor prepare to board a subway car at Boston's Park Street station on the MBTA transit system. JOHN NORDELL / STAFF

An essay in Time magazine awhile back described driving in Boston as, well, different. That was at the beginning of the "Big Dig," the gargantuan public works project to bury our downtown elevated Interstate highway, known locally as the Central Artery. Well, the highway's buried, mostly, and the steel girders supporting the road it replaced are pretty much a memory.

But our driving reputation, dear reader, is intact. That is, as fast and furious: jumping red lights, making left turns from right lanes, everything to make downtown Baghdad traffic look like a Sunday drive in the country. So my advice (and that of numerous guide books, I might add), is to don't even think of driving 'round here. I don't. Except for a couple of car-owning years while living in an outlying neighborhood, I've been that rare American species know as a pedestrian.

The subway (hint: sound like a local and call it the "T"), my bicycle, and especially my feet get me just about anywhere in town I need to go. The way to truly experience Boston is get-out-and-walk. Walk from your hotel to the Public Garden and the Boston Common (both singular, by the way-no "s") and see the city as the locals do. The PDN (Presumptive Democratic Nominee) lives on Beacon Hill, and could walk to the convention in no time at all, if the Secret Service would let him.

So, delegates unite! Leave those shuttle bus caravans at the hotel, and enjoy the 19th century streetscape of Back Bay. Practically every convention hotel is within walking distance of the Fleet Center. And Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota, Tennessee, and Utah visitors can get a skyline-and-Charles River view when they walk across the Longfellow Bridge from their Cambridge hotel.

Take it from a former Chicagoan: when in Boston, take a walk.

— by Greg Palmer

'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