Pizzeria Regina is the famous one, with red-and-white-checked tablecloths. The Flour Bakery & Café is great; it's in the South End. For great Boston clam chowder and other seafood dishes, go to Legal Sea Foods. It's now a chain, but it started in Boston. I love Boston clam chowder. I can't eat that Manhattan stuff. Manhattan clam chowder is red, tomato-based. Boston clam chowder is more creamy and milky. It's fantastic with some oyster crackers. You can get it all over Boston, at Legal Sea Foods, or Durgin-Park, or, even more atmospheric, at Union Oyster House. They shuck the oysters and clams right there. It's been there for nearly two centuries. You can send lobsters from James Hook & Co. and Legal Sea Foods to your family and friends back home by mail.

What are some good neighborhoods to stroll through when you want to walk off all of that delicious chowder and Indian pudding you just ate?

You have to see the South End. There's great food, new boutiques, great architecture. And, of course, Harvard Square is fantastic. Actually, my sister lives right near Harvard Square in Watertown. Harvard Square is just ... you know what's great about it? It feels really smart. ART, the America Repertory­ Theatre, is right there. They have fantastic plays. You have the campus of Harvard right next door. Then you have fantastic little boutiques and great bookshops like the Harvard Book Store, and people are sitting outside, and it's quaint and quintessentially Boston. Walking through Harvard Yard is always inspiring. You know, some things sort of don't match up to the fantasy, but that one does. It is actually picturesque and romantic, and I always wonder what is going on behind the brick walls, with all of the bright young students.

By this point, we might require some ­culture. Where are the best places in Boston to
find that?

The Boston Children's Museum is where kids rule. As a parent or an auntie, you never have to say no. The displays are all for the kids to touch and climb and play on. Interaction is the rule, not the exception. The Museum of Fine Arts has it all. A great collection, a beautiful building, a wonderful café, and a music and film series. Don't forget about the smaller, intimate Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum just a few steps away. She was kind of a queen of Boston society. She lived in this Venetian-style palace that's now known as one of the great small art museums of the world.