This Charlestown park includes a playground and a dog run, and offers great views of the Zakim Bridge. 

Famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted designed this North End expanse, which includes a Little League baseball diamond, a playground, and three bocce courts.

Together with Prince Street Park and the Puopolo athletic area, Langone forms one long, angling expanse of green on the Harbor.

This barely decade-old park and the sailing hub within offer fabulous views of the Boston skyline as well as the marine activity between that and East Boston.

There is plenty of greenspace; and the nonprofit community sailing center based there (hence the name) means plenty of opportunity for sailing.

This expanse in the fast-changing area puts visitors smack-dab amid the activity of Boston’s waterside life, whether it’s office workers catching a break or water taxis sluicing by.

There are plenty of chairs and tables and a lookout terrace.

The peninsula is partly in Boston, partly in Winthrop, and is entirely a piece of a national park covering the Harbor Islands.

There is a 2.6-mile pathway along the waterfront and a further 2 miles of trails on the hills farther inland.

Deer Island also hosts a curiously fascinating wastewater treatment facility, which is open for tours. 

This park was part of the state’s redevelopment of the Southie waterfront and is meant to evoke the area’s maritime past.

More utilitarian is the lawn, the three-season cafe with outdoor seating, and the pair of pergolas. The expanse is also right across D Street from Eastport Park. 

This expanse includes lawns, a playground, and athletic fields; and is right next to the beachfront of Pleasure Bay.

Get a photo with its famous bandstand. 

The HarborWalk isn’t so much a park as one big string of parkland and boardwalk—about 43 miles total, making it one of the longest linear parks in urban America.

Pick it up pretty much anywhere the city touches the coastline outside of Back Bay, Beacon Hill, and parts of Charlestown and East Boston.

This expansive park in the Southie-Dot borderlands—Boston’s largest waterfront park at 60 acres—is chock-a-block full of sports facilities, including batting cages, baseball and softball diamonds, and tennis and basketball courts.

It’s also right next to Carson Beach. 

Interestingly, the city is undertaking a major review of the park, in part to see how to improve it but also to see how to protect it from the effects of climate change.