If you're going to downtown Boston, the Common and Public Gardens are a good place to start, and particularly pretty in the spring. While you're there, you can do things like visit the Freedom Trail if that's your thing, or take a ride on the iconic Swan Boats, which have been in operation since the 1870's. To get there on the T, you can take the Green Line to Arlington Station or the Red Line to Park Street. From there, you can easily get to many of the other places on this list, by foot or on the T.

While it's sadly too early in the year to experience one of the North End's famous Italian Feasts, we still think it would be a mistake to go into Boston and not stop here. Regina's Pizza and Mike's Pastry (for cannoli!) are well worth the lines, and the neighborhood is a 20-minute walk from downtown (Park Street station). (The North End is also home to Paul Revere's house, and other stops on the Freedom Trail.)

Kiley's favorite! Modeled after a 15th-century Venetian palace, the Gardner Museum houses the art collection of eccentric Gilded Age heiress Isabella Steward Gardner, and features a beautiful garden and atrium. (It's also the site of the infamous 1990 art heist covered in Netflix's recent documentary This is a Robbery —if you do visit, you'll see the empty frames of the stolen pieces, still on display.) From downtown, you can take the Green Line E to the Museum of Fine Arts stop.

The Emerald Necklace is a 7-mile system of parks linked by footpaths and waterways, extending from Boston's Back Bay to Brookline. You can walk or bike the whole length of it and visit the Franklin Park Zoo and the Arnold Arboretum along the way, which are two of the six parks on this route.

Or, stay closer to downtown and meander around the Back Bay Fens, which is the first park on the route. It is within short walking distance of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Fenway Park, and tons of restaurants in the picturesque Back Bay neighborhood. It is medium-to-long walking distance to the North End and Boston Common.

The Sox will be out of town on our wedding weekend, but if you're planning to visit Boston proper it's worth a stop, as it's centrally located. You could catch a tour, marvel at the Green Monster, etc., on your way to a museum or to the Emerald Necklace.

In case you didn't know, the McLaughlin's home neighborhood is cool now. :) We particularly recommend Bow Market, which is a collective of cute little shops and restaurants around a central courtyard for outdoor dining. Highlights include a new Filipino restaurant (!), vintage and stationery stores, and a radical bookstore/wine bar called Wild Child, which sells books and art by women, queer folks, and people of color. Bow Market is a 10-minute Uber/Lyft ride or 30-minute walk from the Red Line stop in Harvard Square (or a 10-minute walk from Uncle Jack's house!).