🌷 Bloom, baby, bloom!

It’s Tuesday, Boston.

👑 If you need an excuse to go down the Kate Middleton rabbit hole … The Globe’s writing about it now, so you can tell your friends you’re just supporting local journalism. 

👀 What’s on tap today:

• Spring sprung early

• ISGM heist reward $$$

• Local Amazing Racers

Up first…

OUT & ABOUT

Get a spring in your step

Happy first day of spring! We collectively survived another New England winter (albeit, an underwhelming one). So as a reward, we rounded up some of our favorite underrated outdoor activities in and around the city:

🌳 Skip the White Mountains and try urban hiking. It’s true, you don’t need to leave city limits for some top-notch hiking. We’d recommend Boston’s totally one-of-a-kind 27 mile Walking City Trail connecting 17 Boston neighborhoods from the Neponset River Reservation to Bunker Hill Monument. And for our indoor-ish cat readers who aren’t looking to break a sweat, the Arnold Arboretum is hosting a total solar eclipse viewing event at the top of Peters Hill on April 8.

🚣 Get up close and personal with the Charles. Anyone can rent a kayak or paddle board and set sail down the river with Community Boating starting April 1, or with Paddle Boston in Allston-Brighton, Cambridge, Somerville, or Medford starting the first weekend in May. And if you reaaaally love that dirty water, you can grab tickets to City Splash (not available yet!), where the public gets the rare opportunity to swim in the Charles along the Esplanade.

🏃 Prep for Marathon Monday (without running a marathon). Yes, Marathon Monday may be the main event, but the running events leading up to it are arguably just as fun, like this “Half half half half half marathon” (only .826 miles) or a race against the Green Line (yes, really). If you just like a good ole 5K, check out the Run the Fens 5k and the Rally for Research 5k in Cambridge on March 23. And if you’re not ready to commit to a date, the Jamaica Pond Parkrun hosts a 5k literally every Saturday morning.

😋 Peruse one of Boston’s (many) food festivals. This spring will feature culinary delights like the spring wine and seltzer fest on March 30 at Time Out Market, the launch of the Greenway’s 2024 food truck program with 25 local vendors on April 1, and Boston’s own hot sauce festival on April 27 and 28.

⛴️ Go island hopping. It’s not the Caribbean, but it’ll have to do. Starting May 20, folks can grab the ferry from Boston Harbor City Cruises to both Georges Island, which houses Civil War-era Fort Warren, if you’re a history buff, and Thompson Island, which has plenty of green space and nature to take in.

🌷Plus: Come April, be sure to check out the Isabella Stewart Gardner’s annual nasturtium display, among these other prime flower-peeping spots.

🤔 Need more ideas? Boston.com’s got 50 of them, which you can check out here. 

QUICK QUESTION

🌳 What’s your favorite outdoor space in Boston?

CITY

Quick & dirty headlines

🌷You’re not imagining things: Spring sprung earlier than normal. We all know that this winter was more than a little underwhelming in terms of temperature and snowfall (every New England state experienced some level of record warmth, and Boston is barreling toward a top five least snowy season on record). But the first signs of spring are also cropping up earlier than usual, like the (frankly, lovely) weather we’ve been having, ice cover melting on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire, and birds, bees, and mosquitoes making their seasonal debuts. 

🙅 Gov. Maura Healey wants her personal space. Healey didn’t mince words explaining why her aides refused to give the press info on a mysterious four day trip she took last month: “My personal life is my personal life,” she said. While her work schedule is available for viewing, Healey says she won’t be revealing her personal or family schedule to the public, in a break from her own past practices, and those of her predecessors. In November, Healey’s team also stopped providing details about out-of-state travel in advance due to “security concerns.” 

🖼️ Want $10 million? Keep your eyes peeled for stolen art. March 17 was the 34th anniversary of Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s famous art heist, but the investigation still ain’t over, and tipsters are still consistently reaching out to try and help officials. It’s common for stolen art to take decades to resurface (according to the Globe, there’s still a high probability that those pieces will pop up), so the investigation team is asking the public to get familiar with all 13 missing works. And if we were you, we’d take a look, because there’s a $10 million reward. Use this quiz to brush up.

🎬 Get ready to embrace your inner film bro. The Boston Underground Film Festival kicks off on Wednesday at the Brattle Theatre. Through Sunday, the festival will show between two to five movies per day from across the world, celebrating “unconventional stories … fever dreams, nightmarish visions, and all manner of cinematic forms.” And any event claiming to be bringing “the finest in Vanguard filmmaking” (a.k.a. wacky!) to Boston viewers can’t be a bad place to taste-make. Each film ticket goes for $15, and $150 badges get you unlimited viewing. 

ONE LAST THING

“The Amazing Race” locals 

Mass. residents’ bang-up season of competition reality TV continues. Survivor? Check. HGTV’s “Battle on the Mountain”? Check. Chopped? Check. Now, the “The Amazing Race” is the latest show to feature some Mass. representation.

Out of the 13 teams on the show this season, Waltham residents and father-daughter duo Chris Foster and Mary Cardona-Foster (who works at Boston media platform GBH!)  are competing for the $1 million prize in locations like Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Barbados, the Dominican Republic and, most excitingly of all … Pennsylvania.

If you want to cheer on the Mass. locals, you can catch them on Paramount+ or, if you still watch cable, CBS on Wednesday nights.

— Written by Gia Orsino and Emily Schario

🏃 Thanks for reading! Judging by the photos and hometowns alone, I’m all in on Chris and Mary for the W.

🚇 The results are in: B-Siders are surprisingly empathetic to our T troubles. 42% of readers say that they’re not loving the shutdowns, but are happy things are getting done. One reader said: “Some things have to get worse before they get better.”

💃 Keep up with us @BostonBSide on IG, TikTok, and Twitter. Send comments and suggestions to [email protected] or [email protected].