Hi All,
Flying in from CA with a goal of visiting Harvard (possibly also Boston U and/or MIT), Brown and Yale. Won’t feel comfortable renting a car. Can you please provide advice regarding travel via Amtrak/Uber/etc and anticipated hours of hours of travel between the various locations? Trying to make the trip as short as possible (weekend plus a couple days). Thanks!
Amtrak makes it easy to move between Boston, Providence, and New Haven. Harvard and Brown could conceivably be done in the same day, because the train only takes about an hour, but it would be easier to see a different Boston-area school the same day as Harvard and then do separate days for Providence and New Haven. You can Uber around Boston and Cambridge, but depending on where you’re staying, it’s pretty easy to take the T to/from the airport, Amtrak South Station, Harvard, and MIT or BU. In Providence and New Haven, which are much smaller, Uber is an easy solution for getting to and from the train, hotels, and universities.
Amtrack serves New Haven, Boston and Providence on a regular basis, so you can fly into LaGuardia/Hartford, visit Yale, then train to Providence, then to Cambridge, fly out of Boston or you can reverse the order flying into Boston first. Uber/Lyft are easy once you get to the cities.
Check the visit schedules online if you plan to tour and/or info session. Sometimes that’s not possible on a weekend.
Amtrak is the easiest: New Haven to Providence, about 2 hours; New Haven to Boston, about 2.5 hours; Boston to Providence, about 0.5 hour; (if flying to NYC, New York to New Haven, about 1.5 hours). Trains are scheduled at almost-hourly intervals throughout a weekday. Yale, Brown and Harvard do not (seem to) have organized tours on weekends.
If you are flying in or out of one of the NY airports and taking Amtrak, look into Newark. Amtrak has a station at the airport. If you leave/arrive from LGA, add 1 or 2 days to your travel time (joke, sort of).
^^^
Great advice from Eeyore in post #5. I forgot about the Newark Liberty International Airport Station.
I don’t know why some of these answers seem too complicated to me. Rather than fly into LaGuardia or Newark (why bother starting even further south?) or New Haven, it’s easier, and may be cheaper, to fly to Boston. As Hanna said, easy public transpo from Logan to Cambridge. Uber or T in Boston. Train to Prov, probably $5 to taxi up to Brown (or walk.) Train to New Haven.
Check flight costs to Boston vs Providence. You could start in Prov, take a commuter up to Boston (or bus) one day. Come back and next day head for New Haven, another commuter (or rent a car, if you’re the required age. It’s much easier to drive south out of Prov than into Boston.) Back to Prov to fly home. But you need to check $ and hotel possibilities.
The walk from the Pvd train station and brown is a really easy walk If it’s not raining.
Harvard can be done on public transportation.
Yale is an easy Uber.
^^ Even if you start in Boston, you are going to have to fly out of a NYC airport or Hartford unless you want to take the train all the way back to Boston. If you fly into or out of Laguardia, connecting to Amtrack or Metro North is a pain. You are better off booking a shuttle to New Haven direct from the airport.
If you do take Amtrak, be mindful of its policies on un-used tickets. Amtrak no longer issues refunds on un-used tickets, only re-scheduling or vouchers, if you meet their requirement of notifying them ahead of the departure time (15 minutes, I think) of the train of interest. For example, if you think that you are going to miss a train, call and talk with an Amtrak agent (human) and re-schedule; otherwise, you will have to buy another ticket. However, Amtrak is still great for travelling in the east coast corridor, plenty of room for luggage, spacious (relatively) seats, no TSA lines.
“All the way back to Boston” from New Haven takes all of 2 hours 15 minutes on Amtrak’s Acela Express. That’s no longer than the train from New Haven to the Newark Airport (2 hr 20 min. on most trains, a bit longer on some), and from New Haven there’s more frequent service to Boston than to Newark.
If cost is a factor, don’t forget about MBTA from Boston to Providence. https://www.goprovidence.com/plan-your-trip/transportation/rail-service/ and MetroNorth between New York and New Haven. Yes, it takes longer, but the commuter rails are MUCH cheaper than Amtrak.
Bolt Bus and Megabus if cost is a factor.
You can also get a Zipcar and not be a slave to train schedules.
https://www.zipcar.com/
I would avoid NYC altogether. Pain in the neck getting from JFK or LGA to Penn Sta (Amtrak) or GCT (Metro North). EWK is too far out of the way. Boston, Providence, then New Haven using Amtrak. When you finish up at Yale, take Amtrak back to Boston and fly home.
Also, no direct flights between West Coast and LGA due to 1,500 mile perimeter rule.
You can use Google Map to plan out your trip. It gives you few options on how to get from point A to B (train, bus). I find it to be fairly accurate.
I would give an exact address because it would show how long it would take you to walk from a train(bus) station to the final destination.
I’m with the camp that says avoid NYC metro.
You could try something like this to be really effcient:
-Redeye into Boston leaving Wednesday night. Arrive Boston Thursday morning. Go to Amtrak station and locker luggage so you don’t have to take it everywhere.
-Visit Harvard and MIT
-Take Amtrak to Providence and check into a hotel.
-Visit Brown Friday morning.
-Take Amtrak to New Haven.
-Visit Yale. Take Amtrak back to Boston and fly back to CA on late flight.
I’d never do a schedule like that but it might be possible.
Who are we all talking to? OP hasn’t been back one time since posting.