What to Do on Cape Cod When It Rains

Heritage Museums and Gardens, Sandwich. The Cape's biggest cultural site, and the strongest single wet-day option: changing galleries, an American automobile collection in a round barn, a working antique carousel, and a hundred acres outside for when it clears. Allow half a day.

Sandwich Glass Museum. The Boston and Sandwich Glass Company made this the Cape's one genuine industrial town through much of the nineteenth century. The cases are fine; the reason to go is the live glassblowing, which holds an audience of any age.

JFK Hyannis Museum. Photographs and film rather than objects, covering the Kennedy family's summers in Hyannis Port. The compound itself is private and not visible from any road, so this is the whole of what can be seen.

Cape Cod Museum of Natural History, Brewster. Small, thoughtful, and perfectly sited on the marsh. If the rain eases, its own trail runs from the back door out toward the bay flats.

Whydah Pirate Museum, West Yarmouth. Built around a real wreck: a slave ship turned pirate flagship lost off Wellfleet in a storm in 1717 and found in the 1980s. Conservation work on recovered material is visible on site, which is the interesting part.

Provincetown Art Association and Museum. The Cape's serious art institution, holding work from an artistic community that has been here since 1898.

Woods Hole. A small federal aquarium with local species and rescued seals, alongside ocean science exhibits from the research institution next door. A very good hour on the Upper Cape.

The National Seashore visitor centres, Salt Pond in Eastham and Province Lands in Provincetown, are free, warm, indoors, and have films and exhibits worth an hour. They are the cheapest wet-day answer on the Outer Cape.

If you are anywhere on the Outer Cape when the weather goes, drive to the tip rather than west, because Provincetown was built for this.

Commercial Street is three miles long, twenty-two feet wide, and dense enough that you can duck from a gallery to a bookshop to a bakery to a bar without ever being outside for more than a minute. The art association and museum holds a serious collection from a painting community that dates to 1898. The Pilgrim Monument museum at the top of the hill covers the Mayflower's actual first landfall here in November 1620 and the town's fishing and Portuguese history, and the tower itself is climbed by interior ramps rather than stairs, so a grey day does not stop it — though the view obviously does depend on the visibility.

The galleries are the real answer. There are dozens, they cost nothing to walk into, several are genuinely good, and a wet afternoon is when the owners have time to talk to you.

Food helps too. Provincetown's restaurant scene is disproportionate to a town of three and a half thousand people, and a long lunch at a raw bar with the rain coming off the harbour is not a consolation prize.

The Province Lands visitor centre, a few minutes out of town, is free and has an observation deck; on a clear-but-cold day that deck is the best view on the Cape, and on a wet one it is at least somewhere dry with a film.

Two practical notes. Parking in Provincetown is difficult and expensive even in bad weather, because everyone else has had the same idea. And the shuttle out to Herring Cove and Race Point runs seasonally, which is useful if you want to see what a big sea looks like without driving in it.

Candlepin bowling. A New England variant with small handheld balls, thin straight pins and three throws a frame, played nowhere else in the world except this corner of the country and the Canadian Maritimes. Alleys survive around the Cape and it is a much better two hours with children than it sounds.

Bookshops and antiques on Route 6A. The Old King's Highway carries more secondhand bookshops and antique dealers per mile than anywhere else on the peninsula, and browsing them is a perfectly good way to spend a wet afternoon driving slowly between Sandwich and Brewster.

Cinemas. Chatham has a restored town cinema, Dennis has a historic one beside the summer playhouse whose ceiling carries a remarkable painted mural, and Hyannis has a multiplex. Seasonal schedules vary.

Theatre. Summer companies run in Dennis, Wellfleet and Truro, and a matinee is a good use of a wet afternoon in season.

Breweries and distilleries. Hyannis and several other towns have small producers with tasting rooms, and the Outer Cape has a vineyard. Sensible for adults with a designated driver.

An oyster bar. Genuinely better on a grey day. Wellfleet oysters are eaten within a couple of hours of the water, and a bar with a fire in October is the best meal on this peninsula.

The shops. Chatham's Main Street, Falmouth's Main Street and Mashpee Commons all work under an umbrella, and Hyannis has the Cape's only proper shopping centre if you need an actual raincoat.

A hotel pool. Not glamorous, but with children on the fourth grey day it is the correct answer, and several Cape hotels have indoor pools specifically because of this weather.