The Best Things To Do in Cambridge, MA

Last weekend my friend Kristen picked me up at 7:45 in the morning on Saturday to drive up to Cambridge to see the out-of-town try-out of Alanis Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill” at the A.R.T. According to Google maps, the ride was a little over 3 hours. Spotify kept us deep in music to rock out to as we zoomed up the highway (Freeway? Interstate? I don’t know).

I bought a jug of cold brew coffee and Kristen brought a mix of simple syrup and oat milk. We are the A-Team of road trippers. 

We arrived in Cambridge and we were reminded that Boston is not known for having a friendly grid system. We cursed the winding streets that made no sense whatsoever out loud, regularly asking each other, “WTF is going on with these streets?”

I had spent a few hours once in Cambridge on my last visit to Boston a few years back but I exited to explore the crimson-clad nook outside Boston. We parked in a lot near the theatre, grabbed bubble tea immediately at Dado Tea on Church Street and we popped into Raven Used Books, to see if we could find any hidden gems. Then spent a little while stretching our legs on Eliot Street and Brattle Street. We spent exactly 60 seconds browsing the $700 sleeveless summer dresses at Mint Julep and then finally made our way to b.good down on Eliot Street for lunch. We were craving veggie bowls and b.good certainly hit the spot.

Afterward we walked through Harvard University’s campus (because why not? It’s so pretty!), the Co-Op (I don’t think there’s a single thing you can’t purchase if you want to purchase something with Harvard’s logo on it), and up and down the green in Harvard Square where we contemplated eating ice cream at JP Licks but decided to save it until after the show.

We headed towards American Repertory Theatre over on Brattle Street after where we were fully enveloped in a brilliantly written book by Diablo Cody and energized by the music of Alanis Morissette for the next two and a half hours. It’ll likely transfer to Broadway, so when it does you should totally see it.

Our last stop before rescuing our car from the parking lot was a trip back to JP Licks in Harvard Square. We were feeling indulgent and I ordered a medium with some kind of peanut butter crunch flavor and a dairy-free raspberry, with chocolate sprinkles in a cup, while Kristen got a decadent peanut butter and chocolate shake.

And this guy was a few doors down from JP Licks. I gave his human a dollar because the cat must eat! She was such a pretty cat.

There are probably three dozen ways to spend 6 hours in Cambridge but in a theatre, eating, and drinking bubble tea was how I decided to spend mine.