It's almost summer in Boston. And Boston in the summer is one of my favorite cities in the world. Once-dour faces now light up with smiles. The beauty of the skyline becomes once more noticeable now that we can unbury our faces from our coats and scarves and actually look up. Tables move outdoors to sidewalks. Cars get washed, streets get swept, potholes get filled. Even the once-filthy Charles River sparkles brighter than the Tiber, brighter than the Seine, much brighter than the Hudson. Boston becomes a whole new city.

In the summer, I like to explore. I become a tourist in my own home-town. Most people I know don't take the time to explore they place they live until they have guests to show around, but I think it is important to see your city the way a visitor would once in a while. So that's what I did.

It was a Sunday morning. On Sunday mornings, I live eight minutes from downtown (the same drive can take an hour or more during busy traffic days). On Sundays mornings, traffic flows, parking is free and easy to find, and people are outside relaxing. So I decided to drive into town.

I started my day of exploration in the North End. Always one of my favorite parts of Boston, the North End is our equivalent to New York's Little Italy, except ours is actually bigger and more authentically Italian. After an espresso and a croissant (I couldn't bring myself to call it a cornetto. I never feel right speaking a foreign language in America), I went to the 10:30AM Italian mass at St. Leonard's Church, and I was happy to see that I could still understand and follow the sermon, at least as well as I follow most sermons in English. All the caffes were full of soccer fans rooting for Inter Milan or Parma. Soccer puts me to sleep and I wasn't in the mood for a nap, so I moved on.

I sat down to write where Interstate 93 used to be. It occurred to me I had probably sat there before, in that exact same spot, probably for just as much time, except in my car on the highway and cursing and swearing at the traffic. Thanks to the Big Dig, the largest and most corrupt construction project in the history of mankind, the swath of the city once occupied by the elevated central artery is now a park. A long, skinny park. This is the Rose Kennedy Greenway's first summer, so it will be interesting to see if it is a success.

Since it is so brand new, the greenway still feels a bit steril, but overall they did a nice job with it. There are benches and there are tables and chairs and there is some grass where some people are sitting. There is a little fountain where there's a little girl splashing her toes. There is still the traffic of the Surface Artery running on either side, the highway tunnel entrance just next door, and the Government Center Parking Garage looming like a gray cement monstrosity, but the park feels separated from all that, like a little oasis. It's certainly better than the green elevated monster that was here before, and it gets some use on a sunny Sunday morning, which is a good sign.

One of the major benefits touted by the Big Dig proponents was the reconnection of the North End with the rest of the city, and it does feel less isolated now. One of Boston's strengths is its compactness and walkability. Walking down the greenway all the way to South Station, and walking back along the harbor-front, I could see why this place is considered the most European of American cities.

This is how America does history. Compared to Europe, history is smaller here. It encompasses a much shorter time period. But its very brevity makes the events we do have seem more significant. Combine that with our ruthless love of all things new, and history, when we see it in our cities, truly stands out. One of my favorite sights in Boston is the reflection of an old historic church in the mirrored windows of an ultra-modern skyscraper, a view that shows up time and again. There is also something cool about drinking a Sam Adams Beer across from the grave of Sam Adams himself. While places like New York were busy tearing down the past to build the future, and places like California forgot there was a past, Boston was building around it, picking and choosing what to save, what to replace, what to augment. The result is a beautiful mixture called Boston. And for this summer at least, called home.