"Provincetown" Provincetown by tayloretc

(Note: I’m not a fan of resort towns, and try to avoid season-opening weekends for anything, so the following comments will have to suffice until I can get back to P-town during the off season. Because I will go back sometime; just never, ever, again for the season-opening Saturday of Memorial Day weekend.)

Provincetown is small and charming seaside town, with a thriving artist community, a large and open gay community, pretty houses and gardens, and easy biking to the beautiful beaches of the Cape Cod seashore. There are a lot of places selling fudge, saltwater taffy, and ice cream. There’s some interesting history, too (whole houses floated across the bay with the inhabitants still in them, shipwrecks and whaling), deep-sea fishing, paragliding, and whale watching, fantastic and varied food, excellent galleries and (so I heard) evening entertainment of all kinds (both family and not-so-family friendly, so double check before taking the kids). People are friendly and inviting, and accepting. Visitors come back year after year, and many stay all summer.

During the off-season, the population is about 1,000. During the summer, it’s about 50,000 (I don’t know whether that includes day-trippers like me). That’s a lot of people crowded into a small space; and in the evening I started to feel the atmosphere of New Orleans during Mardi Gras, and was glad not to be staying overnight. For people who like that kind of thing, Provincetown on a summer weekend would be fun.

I thought it made a good day trip, even on a summer weekend. It’s a pleasant 1½-hour ferry ride from Boston (ferries leave at different times from different wharfs). Once in Provincetown, we took the trolley tour; had a delicious late breakfast; rented bikes and rode the bike trails to Race Point Beach; had a delicious dinner; and I was back in Boston a little after 10pm.