Cambridge.

It only seems boring. If you don't mind seeing/seeming Weird, MIT and Harvard are world-historical meaning-matrices, all idiosyncrasy; Central, Inman, and Harvard have enough bars and restaurants (closing embarrassingly early, alas) to see you through the next Clinton administration; Esplanade envy dissipates rounding the Science Museum; good coffee abounds. Great for young parents. It's like a nonjudgmental Berkeley with worse food, music, self-image, and weather. Grad students, oddball lecturers, crotchety grandparents, hipster self-addicts, Sox hooligans, militant bicyclists, the world's smartest teenage population, and jes' folks: a wondrous mix. No place for the poor, but is anywhere? Not Boston, that's certain...