BOS layover advice needed
 

OK, I am flying Southwest ATL to BOS and then have a 4 hour layover until a WOW airlines flight to Iceland. I have never flown WOW airlines, nor flown international out of Boston, and most importantly I have never flown domestic followed by international on two separate reservations. Hence my questions.

I have no bags and plan to check in online for my WOW flight the day before. It looks like Southwest uses terminal A and WOW uses terminal E. So I assume this means I'll need to leave the secured area, take a shuttle, and then enter security again in Terminal E?

I ask because I'm thinking about stopping by Faneuil Hall during my layover. It looks like I can take the airport bus to the MBTA station and then it is only a couple of stops to the Aquarium. Can anybody advise if this is reasonable to do with a 4 hour layover? I figure 45 minutes to get to Faneuil Hall, 1 hour there, 45 minutes to get to terminal E and we'd be there 1.5 hours before our flight. If we already checked in I think all we need to do is go through security?

Obviously they recommend arriving 3 hours before your flight for international, but I'm wondering how much of that matters if you are already checked in and aren't checking any bags. Do they check our passports at the gate?

You can do it this way, but what I'd suggest is to walk through the parking garage to get between terminal A and terminal E. It's well-signed and quicker (IMHO) than taking the shuttle all the way around the airport.

Since you're not checking a bag, your plan is fine as long as the inbound is on-time. I don't know if WOW checks passports at the gate, but I would imagine they do.

I'd just add this: If you have your WOW boarding pass in hand, then the plan is fine. If for whatever reason they won't let you print it at OLCI, then take care of that after your connecting flight lands, then head out if time allows.

Is the WOW flight at 6pm? If so, security is usually a little lighter around that time, and gets heavier into the evening, so your plan works. Recall that Terminal E has no precheck, not that it would apply on WOW anyway, but just to state that all pax go through regular security and the regular drill.

you should be able to do this if you have your boarding pass, no problem. There's a security line in Terminal E at the extreme right hand side of the terminal (closest to Terminal C) that usually has shorter lines than the other security lines in E, and that is the closer line for WOW (and Icelandair), so that should help, too.

I agree with the others that this is doable. As LoganFlyer indicates, walking from Terminals A to E through the Central Parking garage is quickest, but that matters only if you abandon your plan to travel from Terminal A to Terminal E via Faneuil Hall.

I will raise the question, though, of whether an hour of time at Faneuil Hall is worth all of this effort. I haven't been there in quite some time, but isn't Faneuil Hall nothing more than chain stores, bad restaurants and souvenir stores nowadays. (Not sure it was ever anything more than that, but when I was a kid we thought it was the coolest place on earth!)

It's still a cool tourist site. Admittedly, I've only gone once, that was enough, but worth seeing. I can't think of much else you might do in Boston for just an hour - the cool stuff all takes a while. If it were me, though, I'd cab to Row 34 for a quick meal, and then cab right back.

If OP decides to just stay at the airport, Legal Test Kitchen in Terminal A (behind security) is a pretty good representation of the Legal Sea Foods chain (which started locally).

That's exactly what I was thinking. Row 34 or Neptune Oyster Bar.

Unfortunately Legal -- the entire chain -- is a shadow of its formal self. That said, it's still better than most airport food.

That depends on whether one is talking about Faneuil Hall, the old historical building, or the modern Faneuil Hall Marketplace next door, which is "chain stores, bad restaurants and souvenir stores" as described though located in historic buildings. Let's not confuse them. The old building can be worth seeing if, like the OP, one has a short layover at BOS.

These days I admittedly only get to the most touristy locations since I live in Maine, and if I'm near Legal it's because we're doing some kind of activity in Boston. We still enjoy the location by the Aquarium. About a year ago (which is a decade in restaurant time) Legal Crossing was decent as well. What I do like, even if the chain is less consistent than it was, is that the airport locations tend to be pretty faithful to the non-airport locations.

As you said, better than most airport food, certainly at BOS. The location in A (airside) has been my favorite. The landside location on the pmAA side of Terminal B is also okay. I eat there too often, as we'll generally grab dinner there coming off of a west coast morning flight, to miss rush hour.

I was thinking both would be a nice little walk for an hour. I know the marketplace is a tourist trap, but it's a nice looking tourist trap and worth seeing once.

Excellent point. Both the actual Faneuil Hall (especially the upstairs meeting room, which I assume, but don't know for sure, is open to the public) and the marketplace (also known as Quincy Market, which has an incredible rotunda in the middle) are spectacular old buildings. The vast, vast majority of visitors to both of these buildings are too focused on the bad food and stupid t-shirts with sayings like "Pahk Ya Cah in Hahvahd Yahd" to notice the stunning Colonial era architecture.

You can still go up to the second floor of Faneuil Hall and see the meeting room. For food, I'd steer anyone away from Faneuil/Quincy entirely and suggest the nearby Boston Public Market instead--lots of locally-grown fresh food and drinks there.

Yes, great advice. And while Boston Public Market is not fast food -- it's mostly high quality food from respected purveyors -- it's not sit-down service either (although there is seating), so in an hour's time one could both check out Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market, and grab a bite to eat at Boston Public Market (taking it to go if you're running short on time). That actually would be a great place for the OP to find food to take on the plane.

Legal's Harborside (2nd floor) is an outstanding restaurant with fine dining and should not be confused with any other Legal's establishment.