Jan & John Maggs Antiques
The Back Page - August 2019
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Each time we enter this extraordinary museum,
we feel as if we've been transported to Italy. The museum, filled with Mrs. Gardner's exceptionally rich collection of
art and artifacts, reminds us of the Museo Bardini and the Palazzo Davanzati of
Florence.
In fact it was probably the European-ness of our destination that prompted
us to consider an alternate means of getting to it. What if we took the
train?
We quickly calculated the
costs of driving - gas, tolls, and parking - and compared them to the cost of traveling by MBTA
Commuter Rail. We chose the most convenient starting point for us, the Wachusett stop
at the western end of the
Fitchburg Line, an hour from home on toll-free Route 2. Round-trip fare for
two senior citizens was $24, and parking in the adjacent lot is $4.00 for
the day. Coincidentally, our parking fee at the MFA in 2017 was $28. The
train would reduce our driving expense by half and eliminate tolls. But,
more importantly, it would spare us the pressure of driving to a city I've
always felt was more difficult to navigate than New York or London.
Once on the train, we enjoyed a relaxed trip through central and eastern Massachusetts,
arriving at North Station on schedule. The Green Line took us quickly to the
Fenway, and we arrived at the museum twenty minutes before it opened.
After several hours in the museum,
including a delightful and inexpensive lunch in Café
If you've never taken the MBTA Commuter Rail
service to Boston, we'd
encourage you to give it a try. Other lines come to areas of central
Massachusetts that might be more convenient for those living elsewhere, but
this was the right choice for us. We're already
planning our next trip.
Tips:
Here's a link to the MBTA Commuter Rail website: https://www.mbta.com
We'd also recommend the app mTicket, through which you can pre-pay your tickets and track your journey. Ignore the negative feedback; it worked perfectly for a pair of novices, and we found the crews on the train in both directions to be most helpful.
Another tip: Our
train had one car with an upper floor; the views aren't spectacular, but
the car is quite comfortable and relatively
quiet. If you sit on the left side facing forward, you get a lovely view
of Walden Pond between Concord and Lincoln!
Upstairs - just prior to our 8:45 departure
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