Boston & Nantucket (plus traveling during Covid!)

Like many of you, we had several trips and plans for this spring and summer that have been cancelled due to Covid. However, there was one trip we left booked (which we had planned way back in the winter), watching reports carefully to see if it would still be possible- and it was! We ended up traveling to Boston and Nantucket for just about a week and it was wonderful despite all the changes.

Before I describe what we did, I want to preface by saying that by no means is this a recommendation for anyone to go book a trip right now- please use your judgement and carefully look to see what the status of covid is in your own area as well as the area you might travel to and of course your own personal risk factors. For us, we were in constant communication with relatives we had in the area as well as the homeowner of the place we were renting to make sure everything would be as safe as possible. We also knew that nearly everything we would be doing would be outside. While we had a great time in both places, this was by no means an ideal visit of either place just because there are still so many restrictions in place. 

everyone was masked up the entire time we traveled (required at our airport and all flights)

Fortunately the airport was quite empty for our mid-morning flight

trip logistics

We originally planned this trip where we would fly into Boston, stay a few days, then take the ferry to Nantucket and fly back to Denver from there. However, Covid messed up those plans big time, completely deleting our Nantucket flight and so we had to rework the whole trip. There are a few different ways to get to Nantucket- you can go by high-speed, passenger ferry (about an hour), take your car on a ferry (about 2 hours and must be booked WAY ahead- this was no longer an option for us at this point), or you can fly into Nantucket- either from Boston or straight in/out (though that was no longer an option either for us this time). 
Ultimately, we ended up flying into Boston, renting a car there (car rentals on Nantucket are $150/day+!), and driving down to the ferry. We then parked the car while we took the passenger ferry and once in Nantucket we just used either the island shuttle or taxis. I've been thinking through how we might do this next time, assuming things are back to normal so I may add a summary of those thoughts at the end of this post! Let's get on to the trip! 

beautiful view of the Zakim bridge by our hotel

eating on the patio at a restaurant for the first time in months!!

In Boston, we stayed at the Courtyard Marriott Downtown/North Station. The location was perfect and the room was huge! The hotel was hardly occupied and masks were required at all times outside of your room. The lobby was enormous with several tables that came in handy for us later for enjoying some takeout. We were pretty hungry after a long day of travel- one inconvenience is that most of the airports we were at had very little open for food and there is no food service on the airline, though we did receive bottles of water and a snack (United). 
   AB Burgers was right outside our hotel and offered patio dining and takeout so we grabbed a table. It was delicious, with an amazing sunset view of the Zakim Bridge. After dinner, it was almost 10 local time so we headed to bed at the hotel. Next day, the Freedom Trail!