It comes as a disappointment to realize that you can't walk along Boston's waterfront for any distance, broken up as it is by over a dozen heavily developed wharfs jutting into the harbor. However, if you head straight for the sea from Quincy Market, Columbus Park , next to the ugly Marriott Long Wharf Hotel , makes a nice place to sit. Faneuil Hall originally stood at the head of Long Wharf , which stuck out nearly two thousand feet into the harbor, and was the site of the final British evacuation on March 17, 1776. Later, a thousand-foot expanse of the waterfront was filled in, and the Custom House Tower erected to mark the end of the wharf, though it too now finds itself inland, as a further thousand feet of new land has been added.

Out on the water, Boston Harbor Cruises (tel 617/227-4321 or 1-877/733-9425, ; inner and outer harbor $17, inner harbor $8) from Long Wharf are not all that exciting. The port is nowhere near as busy as when fishing boats lined the quays three or four deep on all sides. Instead you pass vast rows of freshly imported Japanese cars on the quayside, and get a close-up view of the airport. You can get off one cruise in Charlestown, to see the USS Constitution , and catch the next one back for no extra charge.

Close by on Central Wharf, the New England Aquarium (July & Aug Mon, Tues & Fri 9am-6pm, Wed & Thurs 9am-8pm, Sat & Sun 9am-7pm; Aug-June Mon-Fri 9am-5pm, Sat & Sun 9am-6pm; $13) has an outdoor pool of basking sea otters. Inside, the colossal Giant Ocean Tank, a four-story glass cylinder, holds sharks, giant turtles and tropical marine life (with an unsettling emphasis on how "delicious" certain species are). Scuba divers hand-feed the fish five times a day, and sea lion shows are held in a floating amphitheater alongside.

If you follow the shoreline past Rowe's Wharf (the base for the water shuttles to the airport), a short distance before South Station the Congress Street Bridge leads off to the left across the Fort Point Channel. Moored to the bridge is the Boston Tea Party Ship and Museum , damaged by fire in 2001 and closed through the summer of 2002; for hours and admission fee call 617/338-1773 or visit . This is not the origi nal Beaver , one of the three ships stormed by patriots in 1773, but a replica, Beaver II , sailed here from Denmark in 1973. Neither is it the original mooring, which was on the now-demolished Griffin's Wharf; instead it's the site of the house where the conspirators prepared their assault.

On the far side of the bridge, a forty-foot milk bottle , which serves as an ice-cream parlor and sandwich bar, marks the Children's Museum , 300 Congress St (Mon-Thurs, Sat & Sun 10am-5pm, Fri 10am-9pm; $7, children $6, Fri 5-9pm $1 for all). The five floors of educational exhibits are designed to entice kids into learning by doing, with plenty of buttons to push, strings to pull and tunnels to crawl through, as well as costumes, water toys and climbing structures.

The Museum of Science , in the Science Park on the Charles River Dam at the northern end of the waterfront, not far from North Station (summer daily 9am-7pm; rest of year Mon-Thurs, Sat & Sun 9am-5pm, Fri 9am-9pm; $11, children $8), has several floors of hands-on exhibits illustrating basic principles of natural and physical science. An impressive OMNIMAX cinema takes up the full height of one end of the building, and the Hayden Planetarium pays its way with Pink Floyd laser shows and the like ($7.50, children $5.50; call 617/723-2500 for show times).

Waterfront

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