Our first visit to Cape Cod. We spent the day visiting the town at the outer tip- Provincetown. This beach town (commonly called P-Town) has a population of less than 3,000, but that grows to 60,000 during the summer as people flock to its sandy beaches. It is located on the eastern edge of the cape and is blessed with a great well-protected  harbor which was utilized by sailors over the centuries.

Provincetown’s main claim to fame is that the Pilgrims landed here first before finally settling in Plymouth because they could not find a source of fresh water near Provincetown. It was a fishing and whaling community in the 1800s and became the home of many Portuguese sailors who came here from the Azores. There is still a large contingent living in the town.

U.S. Route 6 starts here in Provincetown and goes all the way to the west coast. It ran right through our home town of Gary, Indiana.

The Provincetown Players, started in 1915, produced some prominent playwrights like Eugene O’Neill and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

The waters off the east coast of Provincetown earned the name “oceans graveyard” as over 3,000 shipwrecks have occurred there over the past 300 years.

We were offered a trolley tour of the area. Unfortunately, it began to rain as we left and I was unable to get many photos along our route. It did stop about half way through the trip and I was able to record the rest of the trip.

After the tour Stan and Cindy went in search of antiques and Yvonne and I spent several hours walking the main downtown street sightseeing, shopping and having lunch at a beach shack that had gotten high ratings by Yelp.  Our first stop was visitng the Portuguese bakery recommended by our tour guide to have a “flipper”, a Portuguese pastry called malassada, a fried dough dipped in cinnamon and sugar. It reminded us of Indian frybread. The bakery also made “pasteis de belem”, a favorite custard tart of the Portuguese that I had learned to love when we visited Portugal.

Tomorrw we will be back in Boston and so this evening after dinner we had to repack our luggage and make room for all the items we purchased along the way.