Massachusetts (continued)

Cape Cod

If you look at the map of Mass­a­chu­setts, the east­ern part of the state has the shape of a Turk­ish shoe with a high curved toe. This is Cape Cod. Actu­al­ly, it used to be a penin­su­la, but now it is sep­a­rat­ed from the main­land by a man-made canal (Cape Cod Canal) and con­nect­ed to the main­land by two huge bridges (Sag­amore Bridge and Bourne Bridge), one of which we took to enter the peninsula.

The house where we stayed was locat­ed on the bay, not far from the town of Chatham. The two-sto­ry house was built in 1913 and had its own beach. Many hous­es on the island were cov­ered either with sid­ing or wood­en shin­gles, resem­bling a fairy tale house, but all were very neat and well-kept, with trimmed lawns.

The next day, when every­one gath­ered, we set out to explore the town and vis­it the light­house. For some rea­son, there were many starfish nailed to the shore near the light­house. We wan­dered around the town and had lunch at a restau­rant. Cape Cod is famous for its lob­ster catch, and the menu in the restau­rants is abun­dant with seafood.

After lunch, we went mush­room hunt­ing. There were a lot of mush­rooms in the for­est. Amer­i­cans don’t gath­er mush­rooms; they buy them in stores. We only col­lect­ed the mush­rooms we rec­og­nized, and in the evening we fried a huge skil­let of mush­rooms and had fried pota­toes with them.

Provincetown

The next morn­ing, we head­ed to Province­town, locat­ed at the very tip of Cape Cod. This place is famous for the fact that on Novem­ber 21, 1620, the trad­ing ship Mayflower from the Eng­lish city of Ply­mouth docked at its shores with set­tlers who lat­er found­ed the first Eng­lish set­tle­ment in Mass­a­chu­setts — the Ply­mouth Colony. On this ship, the set­tlers signed the Ply­mouth Agree­ment, which is con­sid­ered the first Amer­i­can con­sti­tu­tion. In hon­or of the arrival of the first set­tlers, a gran­ite mon­u­ment 76.8 meters high was erect­ed in the city between 1907 and 1910.

We climbed the steps to the very top of the tow­er, where there was a beau­ti­ful view of the town and the bay, and vis­it­ed the muse­um locat­ed near­by. Then we strolled around the town. The town was once known as a fish­ing cen­ter, lat­er gained tourist sig­nif­i­cance, and then artists and writ­ers set­tled here. Now, this town is also famous for host­ing fes­ti­vals for “rain­bow” peo­ple, with rain­bow flags dis­played in many places.

The next morn­ing, we were prepar­ing to head back. The return jour­ney took us about four hours, tak­ing into account a vis­it to the town of Yarmouth, traf­fic, and a stop at the store for lob­sters. The evening cel­e­bra­tions con­tin­ued at home.