“It’s Boy-See, not Boy-Zee,” said our Uber driver as we climbed into the backseat, headed toward our hotel for the weekend. Kasia, my best friend since third grade, shot me a wide-eyed look and I immediately cracked up, apologizing for my amateur pronunciation.
“Look at the leaves!” Kasia squealed. It was fall in Boise, Idaho, and just about every tree was bursting with color, something we California girls don’t often see. But we hadn’t come to Idaho just for leaf peeping. We’d come to celebrate two decades of friendship in a city that Travel and Leisure named one of the 50 best places to travel in 2018.
This wasn’t our first out-of-state adventure together. Fresh off high school graduation, we road tripped to Utah’s Zion National Park. After listening to hours of burned CDs, stopping for too many bathroom breaks, and staying at kind-of-creepy motels (sorry, Dad), we realized that not only did we love to travel, but we loved to travel together.
I vowed to the Uber driver never to mispronounce the town’s name again (spoiler alert: I did). We settled into our room at the Inn at 500 Capitol—which we chose because it’s close to all the action downtown—and reviewed some of the weekend’s activities: shopping, hiking, wine tasting, and touring an eerie penitentiary. Yep, sounded right up our alley.
Fortunately, we both like to move at a brisk pace. In honor of our friendship anniversary, we trekked, toured, and tasted our way through Boise for three days to come up with our favorite 21 things to do and see in Idaho’s biggest city.