"The Town I Currently Call Home" Top 5 Page for this destination Somerville by mayafly

Somerville is home to many families, but it's also chock-full of students, mostly because it's conveniently located just north of Boston and just east of Cambridge,but rent is considerably cheaper! It's a little run-down in places, but has a lot to offer, including fun bars and good food (especially Brazilian food, due to the large Brazilian population here). When you cross the town line from Cambridge, you immediately see the three-storied apartment houses that are so typical here that they even made it into Paul Theroux's description of Istanbul in "The Great Railway Bazaar": "On our left the suburbs were passing, altering every fifty yards: scattered tent settlements and fishing villages gave way to high-rise apartment houses, with shacks at their ankles; then a shantytown on an outcrop of rock, bungalows where it levelled out, and an uneven terrace of wooden houses toppling grandly from a cliff - a style of building (the falling, unpainted,three-decker house) favored in Somerville, Massachusetts, as well as in Istanbul" (p. 44).

• Pros:cheap, close to Boston/Cambridge, lots of young people
• Cons:some sketchy areas that aren't safe at night, not much to look at
• In a nutshell:fun and friendly student town