Thanks to the area’s 50-some colleges, Boston has a reputation for hitting the books first, goofing off second. To be sure, venerable institutions like Symphony Hall, the Museum of Fine Arts and Faneuil Hall still anchor the city’s hold on music, art and history. But in recent years, this little big town has emerged from its brainy, introverted shell to offer a livelier mix of cultural offerings, plus an exploding food scene. The Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway parkland extends from the North End to Chinatown, connecting a new frontier of glass and steel construction known as the Seaport District to downtown. Of course, this is also a sports- and craft beer-obsessed city, meaning you’re never far from a Celtics, Bruins, Patriots or Red Sox fan hoisting a pint for the home team in one of the Hub’s zillion pubs. Go Boston.

Friday

1. Uncommonly Local | 2 p.m.

The classic tour begins at the 50-acre Boston Common, the nation’s oldest public park and endpoint of Frederick Law Olmsted’s green-space network known as the Emerald Necklace. From here, if history’s your thing, walk the 2.5-mile Freedom Trail, which wends its way through 16 Revolutionary-era sites — from the Boston Massacre site in front of the Old State House to the Paul Revere House in the traditionally Italian-American enclave of the North End to the Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown. Just follow the red brick (or painted) trail as far as your legs can take you — perhaps as far as the ancient Warren Tavern, where George Washington and Paul Revere once tossed back a pint. For its “Make Way for Ducklings” sculpture (a tribute to Robert McCloskey’s picture book) and the bench featured in the film “Good Will Hunting” (now an unofficial memorial to the late Robin Williams), the adjacent Public Garden is also worth a tour. In warmer months, glide in one of the Garden’s 19th-century Swan Boats; in winter, take a spin on ice skates on the Common’s Frog Pond.