Flowers for Waltham, MA

Order a birthday bouquet for a Moody Street apartment on a Friday and the delivery day tells you a lot about Waltham: the driver has the restaurant strip and the river crossing to work early, then climbs to Piety Corner and Warrendale before pushing out to the office towers on Winter Street. This is the Watch City, named for the Waltham Watch factory whose brick spine still stands on the Charles, and it has always been two towns at once — a dense downtown of triple-deckers and a spread-out edge of campuses and corporate parks along Route 128. Brandeis University anchors the west end near the interchange, Bentley University sits north on Beaver Street, and Newton-Wellesley Hospital pulls a steady stream of get-well orders just over the Newton line. Sympathy and hospital work make up the reliable backbone; graduation and move-in weekends spike the campus routes.

Other Massachusetts cities.