Provincetown, Cape Cod - September 1-4, 2009

---

Provincetown is located at the tip on Cape Cod. It is a charming little town that is extremely gay friendly - the first thing you will notice upon disembarking the Boston ferry and walking up the dock onto Commercial St. is all the rainbow flags. You will probably also notice before you even get off the ferry that there's an awful lot of gay people who love going to P-Town. But there are also a lot of antique stores and whatnot that cater to the old lady crowd, and there's lots of vacationing families too.

We stayed at the Provincetown Inn, located at the very end of Commercial St. on the west side, about a 20 minute walk from the center of town. Although I loved how our motel was located in a quiet spot on the edge of town, right on the beach and near the breakwater, the walk to and from where all the restaurants and shops were located got a bit tedious. This downside was quickly remedied when we rented bicycles, however. My only other complaint about the inn was thin walls! I lost a lot of sleep the first night because of the snoring going on in the room next to us! The pool, free breakfast, and beach right outside our door made up for it though.

I loved my temporary bicycle - such a smooth ride, these bikes allowed us to explore the paths of National Seashore Park and Race Point Beach quickly and easily. Navigating busy Commercial St. was a bit trickier - really, this street should be closed to regular vehicle traffic (delivery trucks excepted of course) - because with all the pedestrians and cyclists on this narrow little street, cars are a big annoyance. They don't move very fast, which is good for the rest of us, but not so good for those in the cars - so please, don't drive on Commercial if you can avoid it.

Lots of delicious restaurants also line Commercial St. - we ate so much great food, particularly lots of seafood. But the Portuguese Bakery does not have good natas (creamy egg tarts.) The natas we get in our neighbourhood Toronto Portuguese Bakery are far superior to what are more like plain old lemon tarts in P-town.

Whale watching from P-Town was also fantastic. We saw numerous whales all at once, in multiple directions, it was awesome! The only downside was we only saw humpback whales (we saw four different types of whales during our Gaspe, Quebec tour); but we also saw some starfish, which are interesting creatures that kind of resemble a shark fin bobbing on the water's surface.

The weather was perfect our entire stay in P-Town. Other things we did was relaxed on the beach, went up in the Pilgrim Monument Tower, and saw Margaret Cho! We saw a flyer advertising her show, which she was doing in P-Town for an entire week. The night we went to see her, she was playing a ukulele out on the street in front of the venue. Unfortunately, she had lost her voice, so she had other comics read her material while she acted it out onstage. I was very disappointed at first, but the show turned out to be hilarious! She used one of those computer things to type stuff so she was able to answer questions from the audience and say funny things while sounding like Stephen Hawking. And she performed a couple of burlesque bits that blew my mind. I've seen a lot of burlesque, and let me tell you, Margaret Cho can swirl nipple tassels like nobody's business. The gay men sitting next to me weren't nearly as impressed, however. Despite Stephen Cobert's assertion that gay men love Margaret Cho, i got the feeling that certainly isn't universal among them - particularly when she's naked onstage in front of them. The other comics that accompanied and opened for Cho were also hilarious - i laughed a lot, as did my partner, who I could never convince to see Cho in Toronto when she was here (he didn't think she was funny, but he's singing a different tune now.)

P-town is only a 2 hour ferry ride from Boston - definitely worth the trip! I am glad we had 3 days there, it was the perfect amount of time.

---

Photos

Breakwater
This breakwater leads out to Long Point.

Long Point Cross
A soldier from WW2 is buried here on Long Point.

Marina Dock
The ferry lets you off at the end of this dock, so right when you get off it, you pass by all these little huts selling various trinkets and tickets for things to do, such as whale watching, sailing, fishing trips, etc.