Two weeks ago, I made my first venture into Boston since being back after the start of the pandemic. My friends and I were very curious to see what it would be like and were met with really interesting answers.
Since there were about six people in our party, we decided to take cars to the city. We also thought that this would limit the potential spread that would come from using the green line. We parked in a parking garage at the Boston Commons, which was easy to find and park in, and brought us right to the middle of the Commons.
The Boston Commons had a decent amount of people in it, but not as much as you would usually see on a sunny Sunday normally. People were spread out on blankets and benches, but there was a lot of discrepancy in mask wearing across all visitors.
We headed over to the shops across the street, and this was almost busier than normal. We went to Primark, and we felt very suffocated and as if we could not really walk around without almost bumping into others. This made us not stay very long, and head out to venture around other stores such as TJ Maxx, which definitely had fewer people.
We noticed some stores had lines that were out the door. When we got closer, we noticed a lot of stores like this had signs saying that they were going out of business, so they were having massive sales. I think that these shutdowns really stemmed from the pandemic, with many stores shut down for long periods of time.
We walked to dinner at Boston Burger Company and were able to sit outside and enjoy a socially distanced meal complete with crazy milkshakes.
Even though it seemed very different to be there during the pandemic, we were able to do it safely and feel very comfortable being there for a day out.