Today was all about visiting the small towns up and down the cape, as we left the room it was either raining or 100% humidity to be honest it wasn’t easy to tell which it was! We started by doing a drive around the point by the hotel and over to Woods hole which is the next town round, this is smaller than Falmouth but more aimed at the tourist industry as it is the main route to Martha’s Vineyard. We started the drive out towards the canal although we didn’t see the lookout point until after we had pasted it so we may have to try and stop there on one of the other drives. We were following the old King’s highway and our first town was Sandwich which is famous for Glass blowing but also has a small mill that was restored around 1961 and is open for demonstrations during the summer. We parked the car and went for a walk round the town although we didn’t go in the Glass blowing museum it is obviously a key tourist stop as there were a number of coaches outside. We walked round the town which has ‘the most photographed church in America’ apparently it was also featured on the cover of an Elvis album, but at the risk of not appreciating a good story I am not sure how they knew as there are a lot of really pretty churches that look very similar. A walk around the town meant that we looked at some really nice houses and a few cute shops it was then time to get back in the car and head for the next stop which was Yarmouth Port which is no longer a port but has the distinction of producing a large number of sea captains, talking to one of the guides it would seem that this is because at the time the options were farming or going to sea and the land around this area is quite poor so quite a number went to sea. There is actually a walk around the Sea Captain’s Houses in Yarmouth Port which has 57 houses associated with ships captains in a town which probably only has about 159 houses in total! We visited the historical society and apparently had just missed the ex-mayor of Yarmouth England who had left them a book on historic Yarmouth. We had one of those very strange Anglo America moments where they obviously thought we should know who he was and possibly even know him as they told us where he was going next and also where he was planning on having lunch! The good thing is that they gave us some useful information on the area, although unfortunately some of the houses were closed for the season or actually only open a couple of days a week anyway. We did go into Captain Bangs Hallet’s house which currently has an exhibition of black clothing through the ages and I rather go the impression that the people at the house thought we may have come especially to see this, but luckily the house is still open so despite being told about a lot of clothing that was very elegant but to be honest not that fascinating we did manage to find out a bit about the house and the occupants. This is the only fully furnished Sea Captains home open to the public on Cape Cod, it has eight rooms furnished to represent 19th century life as well as a 18th cellar kitchen which unfortunately was closed due to ‘problems with the stairs’ Normally you have to tour the house on a guided tour but as the exhibition was on we could just go round and as it turned out we ended up having a virtual tour anyway but a private version as we were the only people there. After we spent probably longer than we should have talking to one of the guides we had a walk round the area, we had also wanted to visit Winslow Crocker’s house which was moved to Sandwich from West Barnstable by Mary Thacher a descendant of one of Yarmouth’s original settlers, but despite moving the house she then updated it with 20th century furnishings but this is only open on the second and fourth Saturday of the month so we got back in the car and set off to Provincetown which is right at the tip of the Cape. This is very commercial but is also the first place the Mayflower landed so is of quite historical significance. We stopped for something to eat as it was getting quite late by the time we got there, then went for a walk around the town, we looked at the town hall and the monument to the Pilgrims first landing on 21st November 1620. We decided against heading up the monument and instead decided to head back to the apartment which was actually a good decision because we didn’t get back until nearly 7pm, but were greeted by an amazing sunset, apparently this is due to tropical Storm Maria 360 miles to the east of us.
