Boston: Hey, if it's good enough for Jackie O

'Your 30th wedding anniversary?" My friend's tone implied a regrettable lack of adventurousness. "I don't know anyone else who's been married for 30 years." "How quaint!" added a chance acquaintance. "You mean to the same person?" Nevertheless, here it was: the big Three-Oh. Where could we go to hide our shame? "Romance? Sure, we do romance," chorused the Boston Visitors' Bureau and our hotel. Currently, the American welcome is warmer, the dollar better value and fares and hotels at their cheapest. And, important bonus, we could fly to Boston from Scotland. Le Meridien had champagne on ice and a couple of red roses waiting in a wickedly luxurious room, overlooked by the tall canyons of the downtown financial district. A list beside the bed suggested a horse and carriage ride; a chauffeur-driven limousine; an awesome ride in a trolley car whose only stops involved eating quantities of chocolate. As we set off on foot – on a route marked in red to ensure

'Your 30th wedding anniversary?" My friend's tone implied a regrettable lack of adventurousness. "I don't know anyone else who's been married for 30 years." "How quaint!" added a chance acquaintance. "You mean to the same person?" Nevertheless, here it was: the big Three-Oh. Where could we go to hide our shame? "Romance? Sure, we do romance," chorused the Boston Visitors' Bureau and our hotel. Currently, the American welcome is warmer, the dollar better value and fares and hotels at their cheapest. And, important bonus, we could fly to Boston from Scotland.

Le Meridien had champagne on ice and a couple of red roses waiting in a wickedly luxurious room, overlooked by the tall canyons of the downtown financial district. A list beside the bed suggested a horse and carriage ride; a chauffeur-driven limousine; an awesome ride in a trolley car whose only stops involved eating quantities of chocolate.

As we set off on foot – on a route marked in red to ensure that visitors don't stray from the path of Revolutionary history – I began to worry about living up to the standards plainly expected from visiting spoonies. This very Freedom Trail, the Visitors' Bureau had hinted, offered "many an opportunity to steal a kiss". With the rain coming down like musket shot, stealing an umbrella seemed a more pressing consideration. But when the sun shone, as it mostly did, this most walkable of American cities needed no hype.

There is a completeness about Boston's downtown neighbourhoods that has nothing to do with the heritage industry. Beacon Hill gas lights twinkle for real; its brick sidewalks buckle gently from the pressure of old tree roots. We played the game of make-believe. Let's have that stable block in Vernon Street, the one with the elegant fanlights; or the house with the iron balconies and the ivy-choked fire escape, noisy with sparrows.

Boston suits a companionable pace. We found ourselves constantly seduced off track: by skaters on the Common; by bargain shirts in Filene's Basement and ultra-silly Valentine cards in the Washington Street bookshops; by the sinful ricotta and chocolate cannoli which are the speciality of Mike's chrome and tile pastry shop in the North End.

A stretch hearse waited nearby, outside the Sacred Heart Italian Church. "Go in! Join the wake," urged a couple of cheerful mourners on the doorstep. "You just need to say a little prayer." Empty, the North End churches echoed with untold stories: box pews for patriots, plaster saints for homesick Sicilians. A plaque stating that in 1894 John Kennedy's mother, Rose Fitzgerald, was christened in St Stephen's bore witness to how quickly an immigrant family could leap the symbolic gap between these cramped streets and the glass and steel ramparts towering over their perimeter.

This stunning view added greatly to the pleasures of Mamma Maria where we feasted on home-made basil ravioli and a classic osso buco with saffron risotto. Table 99, secluded in a tiny bay window, was a sure-fire spot for proposals, the waiter assured us. "At least 60 a year." At our own table, only last week, a young man had gone down on one knee to a chorus of "Say Yes! Yes! YES!" from diners. "What happens when the answer's no? "Then it's tears and grappa all round."

Boston majors on romantic restaurants. In the Omni Parker you can sit at the very table where JFK proposed to Jackie. You can spend megabucks, like around £200 for two, on townhouse splendour at L'Espalier, where the artichoke soup comes laced with black truffles and lavender and the oysters with Sevruga caviar.

We toasted our anniversary over dinner in the multi-awarded Rialto in Cambridge's Charles Hotel where the famous Jody Adams's cooking is a celebration of all things fresh, flavoury and Americo-Mediterranean. I bought Jody's new book In the Hands of a Chef. It might take me another 30 years to achieve a chocolate pud whose crust leaked creamy goo in the manner of well-ripened cheese but it seemed an opportune moment to recall the way to a man's heart.

We spent the day in Cambridge doing favourite things: rifling through bookshops and looking at pictures. Sunlight sparkled on the snowy Harvard yards, where visitors ambled and students tossed frisbees unimpeded by the sort of notices telling you to keep out which distinguish college greens in the other Cambridge.

Tea-time piano music tinkled through the warm, almost deserted galleries of the Museum of Fine Arts where we found Rembrandts and Van Ruisdaels to remind us of our Amsterdam honeymoon; searching portraits of the local élite by Copley and Sargent to anchor us to Boston; Gauguin's masterpiece Where Do We Come From? Where Are We? Where Are We Going? to ask the big questions.

More paintings, more everything, gleamed through the dim recesses of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum where a Sunday afternoon concert has to come high on any list of Boston's most romantic fixes. A century ago, Isabella built a wildly eccentric Venetian palace, stuffing it with a hodgepodge of treasures, everything from a Titian to a Turkish helmet. Courtiers, peasants and huntsmen sported across a series of Flemish tapestries, giving back the liquid notes of Debussy's Les Chansons de Bilitis: a shepherdess protesting against time as the rain erases her love letters from the sand.

The Facts

How to get there

Juliet Clough travelled with Icelandair (020-7874 1000) which serves Boston daily from London Heathrow and four times weekly from Glasgow. Fares are from £218 and £346 respectively. Visit www.icelandair.co.uk and click on netclub for special offers, which include city breaks to the United States. A three-night break to Boston costs from £380 per person.

Where to stay

Juliet Clough stayed courtesy of Le Meridien Boston Hotel (001 617 451 1900; www.lemeridienboston.com). Special rates are available until the end of March, costing from $129 (£94) per room, per night. Romantic packages are from $245 to $450.

The Fairmont Copley Plaza (001 800 866 5577; www.fairmont.com) in Back Bay is the grande dame of Boston's older hotels. Weekend specials are available until the end of March, from $199 per night. Buy two nights and the third is free.

For lavish Victoriana (open fires and breakfast taken in your four-poster bed), try the Charles Street Inn (001 617 314 8900; www.charlesstreetinn.com), which has been voted Boston's most romantic hotel. Room rates are from $220 to $340 per night.

Note that all US hotel prices listed exclude tax.

Osprey Holidays (0870 241 4217) offers a Boston weekend package, which is bookable until 20 March. It costs £439 per person, and includes three nights at The Tremont and return flights from London.

Further information

Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau (020-7978 7429; www.Boston USA.com).

Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism (020-7978 7429 www.mass vacations.com).

Discover New England (premium-rate line: 0906 558 8555; www.discovernew england.org.

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