Cape Cod & the Islands, Aug 1-5
For our fifth wedding anniversary we visited Cape Cod and the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard in southeastern Massachusetts - and were blessed with the weather.
A sandwich in Sandwich, the first Cape Cod village we reached (it had to be done!).
A dip in the Atlantic off Falmouth Heights, our base for the next couple of days.
Our bed-and-breakfast, Baileys by the Sea.
We passed through many villages en route to Provincetown.
Lunch in Wellfleet.
Provincetown, at the tip of the Cape.
Provincetown was the site of the Pilgrims' first landfall in America; they spent five weeks here before unfriendly Indians and an inhospitable environment persuaded them to sail across Cape Cod Bay to Plymouth.
When the Pilgrims landed in 1620, these sand dunes were concealed beneath soil and dense forest.
Spot Mike waving from the top of the sand dune at Truro!
And here he is at Chatham Beach, just across from the Chatham Lighthouse.
The magnificent rhododendron bushes are my strongest memory of the Cape Cod houses.
At the Blue Coral, just off Chatham's Main St.
Arriving by ferry in Nantucket, 30 miles off the coast of Cape Cod.
Nantucket was the whaling capital of the world in the early 1800s.
Many of the quaint 19th-century houses are former sea captains' homes.
The return journey to Hyannis on Cape Cod.
The church where Maria Shriver (of the Kennedy clan) married Arnold Schwarzenegger.
At the John F. Kennedy Memorial. (JFK used to holiday in the exclusive residential area of Hyannisport.)
Then another ferry to Martha's Vineyard, where we stayed in Edgartown. Here Mike is sampling the Newes of America pub's "Rack of Beers".
The Edgartown Lighthouse.
A sortie to the town of Oak Bluffs to sample the ice cream...
...the Victorian 'gingerbread' cottages...
...and the local ale.
Down at the Edgartown harbour to watch the sun set.
Many of the large Federal or Greek Revival-style homes built for or purchased by sea captains during the prosperous heyday of the whaling era are found here on Water St. We stayed in this building, part of the Kelley House hotel, which opened as a tavern in 1742.
Waiting for the ferry - looking towards Chappaquiddick Island.
Back in Falmouth, with its typical New England church and village green.
On our return to Boston we stopped in the lovely town of Newport in the state of Rhode Island.
