Beacon Hill

Gaslit brick sidewalks, steep streets, and — I swear — more bookshops per block than anywhere I've been. Beacon Hill is where I started my Boston days, usually with a sandwich from DeLuca's Market on Charles Street.

Beacon Hill Chocolates — Gorgeous boxes and art-decorated chocolates. Beautiful and delicious. The signature here is the hand-decorated keepsake box — you pick the lid art, then fill it with small-batch confections. It's been a Charles Street fixture since 2006 (at number 91), and chocolatier Paula Barth travels to source rare chocolates from Belgium, France, Switzerland, Italy, Brazil, and the U.S. — which is why it keeps landing on Boston's "best chocolatier" lists.

Beacon Hill Books & Cafe — A wonderland: small trains on the third floor, cozy house-like rooms, and a whole kids' floor themed around Paige the Squirrel. I bought two mini-prints from its Inciardi vending machine.

Boston Athenaeum — Billed as a library, but really more a beautiful museum. I bought a "Meet Me at 10½" mini tote — perfect for my national park passport stamps.

A color scheme I kept noticing — purple, white, and gold turned up on banners and signage around town, and I finally stopped to ask what they were. They're the colors of the American women's suffrage movement: purple for loyalty and steadfastness, white for purity, gold for light and life. Alice Paul's National Woman's Party borrowed the palette from the British suffragettes but swapped their green for gold — a small change that made it distinctly American.

Bostonians read a lot. Like, a lot. I love it.