If you’re in Back Bay and want to be in Cambridge, this is by far your best option as the Charles River is in the way. It’s a scenic walk, but I wouldn’t recommend visiting if you aren’t already at MIT or Back Bay.

You could swim across, I guess. Or if you had a boat you could probably row across the Charles. In the coldest parts of winter you might be able to walk across, but the one time I saw someone do that there were about 10 police officers on the other side to politely tell her not to do that. Unless maybe you’re Kate Winslet or Jim Carrey.

As a bridge, it’s fine. It isn’t as pretty as the Longfellow. It is measured it in Smoots, which is an MIT thing. The bridge is 364.4 Smoots. He was a guy at MIT.

The main complaint about the Harvard Bridge is that it goes to MIT, not Harvard. It’s actually named after the guy Harvard and not the school Harvard, but that doesn’t make a confused tourist any less confused. If you keep walking on Mass Ave you will eventually get to Harvard, so at least it’s going in the right direction.

As someone who went to Caltech I’m all for things not being named after MIT, so my main complaint about the bridge is that it’s got too many cyclists on the sidewalk. The cyclists actually aren’t so bad, it’s the people on notarized scooters and skateboards. There’s this one guy who crosses at high speed in full motorcycle gear (leather and helmet) which just seems unfair to all the pedestrians who are his inevitable target.