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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Waltham, MA?
My husband and I have been married 6 months now, and are ready to make the move outside the city to a bigger place (need room for all our fun new wedding goodies:-). We are looking to buy, and have found a great home (and put in an offer) in Waltham. Any thoughts or advice??
I am not to farmiliar with much outside the city, but the area looked great- lots of fun restaurants, open space, etc.- while still being pretty convinient to the city. I work near Boston Common and my husband works in Burlington. I'd love to hear thoughts- Anyone live there? What do you think? Public Transportation to the city??
THANKS!!
Re: Waltham, MA?
Waltham is a pretty good city. Like you said it has a lot to offered within city limits, but with 95 going through it it is very easy to get anywhere. 95 can be pretty trafficy on that section during rush hour though. But YH can probably find some back roads to Burlington if the highway was bad.
Public transit will probably be the cheaper option for you since parking in the city is pretty pricey. Not to mention the Fresh Pond area can be a nightmare during rush hour. You're pretty close to Alewife so you could drive there or take a bus and take the Red Line to Park Ave stop.
GL with your house hunting/buying!
Welcome to the board!
Several ladies on the board live in Waltham, me included. I commute to the city via commuter rail (either Waverly or Waltham stops) or the bus. There are a few bus options, depending on what part of Waltham you'll be living in. As for Burlington, I prefer taking the back roads there rather than the freeway.
I find Waltham to be a very convenient area to live. I'm equidistant to the Pike and 95 and Boston is a quick 20-25 minute drive away or there are the public transportation options. There are lots of good restaurants, I'm literally walking distance into Watertown, Belmont, and Newton and all those towns have to offer, there are tons of grocery store options including local places (love Russo's) as well as lots of big chains (Shaw's, S&S, Hannaford's), biking trails, parks...we've enjoyed living here.
I work in Waltham (and commute from Dedham) and really like it. In fact, when our lease is up in another 10 months or so we'll probably move up there. There are a ton of good restaurants in the area, and I think it's also really pretty in some areas.
Good luck with the move!
I lived in Waltham before we got married for 10 months, and honestly I didn't love it. We have friends in Southie,Charlestown, Somerville area and it was a pain to go and see them, as there was never a quick/easy way to get there. I always felt we fighting traffic in every direction and we couldn't really cab it as it's expensive, and public transportation wasn't great on the weekends or evenings. As you have to drive to the train station. Traffic gets very heavy at the waltham exits thru Trapelo Road. I commuted to Framingham and took the back roads, and it would take me 30 minutes to get to exit 28A from when I got onto 128 about 2 miles from my exit. Such a pain. The homedepot is not easy to get to, I felt that we had to leave Waltham for a lot of things, like clothes shopping, sushi restaurants, target/bed bath and beyond, but you can get up to Burlington pretty quickly.
My DH commuted to the city from Alewife since he had to go into South Station, it wasn't too bad. Moody street is great for restaurants, Solea, an Italian restaurant in this brick building (can't remember the name) Margaritas. There's a great Halloween costume store on Moody as well. Pizzi's farm is great for sandwiches, and Glendale Liquors is a great liquor store they do a special on wine every 1st and 3rd Thursday of the month. Beaverbrook Park which is in Belmont (on the line) is a nice park and if you have a dog there are a lot of dogs that go there in the evenings.
I never really found a hairdresser or nail place that I liked either and I like to have those close by.
GL
Sorry I'm late to this post. I've lived in Waltham for 4 years now and I do love it. I think it's a great little town and they're doing more with it every year to get it better. There are some really not so great parts of Waltham, but overall, I think it's a great little town.
Some cons to it: yes, traffic can get tricky, but there's SOOO many backroads that you can actually get around it pretty easily once you learn your way around the town and the surrounding towns. The one big huge con I've always had about Waltham is the lack of clothes shopping. There is literally NOTHING in Waltham. You have to go to Natick, Burlington, or Newton. It's really very strange to me that the only clothes shop worth going anywhere near is TJ Maxx.
PS: The Italian place with the brick building is Biagio and it's FANTASTIC!
Good luck with the move! Waltham will treat you well!
THANKS FOR THE GREAT TIPS AND ADVICE, EVERYONE!
We got the house, and close in the beginning of November- really exciting! I really appreciate all of the transportation advice, my biggest worry was how the heck I was going to get into the city- seems like there are plenty of options. As far as traffic goes, we are moving from the South End- so traffic has always just been a part of life for us :-) After 5 years of city dwelling- we are looking forward to getting a bit outside of the city, while still having some city comforts around. Seems like Waltham will be the perfect place for us to call home :-)
Thanks again everyone, see you in Waltham!
I lived in Waltham for 8 years. We just moved further west to buy a house and I miss Waltham dearly. I went to bentley and then lived in 3 apartments in the 4 years since I graduated.
We wanted land on a non busy road and for the amount we wanted to spend on a house, we weren't going to find that in Waltham. IF we had more money or had less expections we would have stayed in Waltham, no doubt.
For the PP who complained about the traffic, like someone else said, once you learn the area, there was good ways of getting around it. I loved Waltham bc it was close enough to get into the city in 15 or so minute, but far enough away that you didn't have to deal with most ofthe city traffic. While I lived there I commuted to Andover for 2 years and then Southborough for another 2. Both commutes were an absolute breeze.
We lived right off Moody St. so all of the restaurants and stuff were in walking distance. There's a little hole in the wall Mexican place (Taqueria Mexico) on Charles Street (it's off of Moody right when you turn off Main St.) that is like 10000x better than Margaritas if you want actual authentic mexican food. For Thai food there's a place over by the highway called Green Papaya - best thai in that area. IF you want good Italian there's a place in Newtonville called Fiorella's. It's way cheaper than the wanna-be expensive Italian restaurants in Waltham.
John Brewer's is pretty good if you want a burger and a beer or a sweet spot to watch a sporting event.
IF you have any other questions page me.