Walden Pond

Walden Pond in early November (Courtesy of trekearth.com)

Take a long, leisurely bike ride on the Minuteman Trail or travel half an hour via Commuter Rail, and you’ll reach historic Concord, MA, an important Revolutionary War site and home to literary greats like Nathaniel Hawthorne and Louisa May Alcott. A mile out of Concord is Walden Pond, sometime home to another literary great: Henry David Thoreau, writer, philosopher, abolitionist, notable tax resister, and more. The foundations of his hand-built cabin are still marked out with stones, and there’s a small sandy beach for lounging, a surprisingly expansive pond for swimming, and beautiful wooded trails for rambling and philosophizing in.

Taza Chocolate Factory

Taza Chocolate on display (Courtesy digboston.com)

Many of us have walked by the Tootsie Roll Factory on Main St., but fewer know that Cambridge has its own, local chocolate factory! Check out Taza in Somerville (30 minutes’ walk from SP) for artisanal, super-organic, direct-trade (that’s one step up from Fair Trade), Mexican-style chocolate. For $3 (pick up a discounted voucher from the MIT Activities Committee in Stata Center), you can take a guided tour and enjoy as many free chocolate samples as you can handle – cinnamon, vanilla, chili, chipotle… And since the only thing better than chocolate is chocolate inside of chocolate, be sure to try the choco-coated cocoa nibs!

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Isabella Stewart Gardner Courtyard (Courtesy wordpress.com)

Even if you don’t normally like art museums, you might like to give the Gardner a try. It’s an ornate, turn-of-the-century, Italian-style villa that belonged to socialite and arts patron Isabella Gardner, and it’s still stuffed with her eclectic art collection, spanning antiquity to modernity. SP’s last outing to the Gardner had a few residents wondering if we couldn’t annex the Gardner’s luxurious interior courtyard, to serve students’ relaxation needs.

Boston Harbor Islands

Georges Island and Fort Warren (Courtesy Wikipedia)

Catch a ferry out from Long Wharf in Boston and visit the Harbor Islands. Explore an old military fort, participate in one of the many events hosted on the islands (a Native American cultural festival was being held during last summer’s SP outing), or just relax and enjoy the views of Boston and the Atlantic from one of many grassy hills. Once you’ve returned to Boston, it’s not too long a walk to Haymarket for outrageously discounted produce, or the North End for delicious Italian pastries! (For the record, of the North End’s dueling cannoli bakeries, I for one prefer Modern Pastry to Mike’s.)

By Diana Chien, SP Outings Chair