Things to Do on Cape Cod for Couples

Most people day-trip to the tip and regret it, because Provincetown does not show its hand until the light goes.

The town runs along a single three-mile street between the harbour and the dunes. Galleries sit next to tackle shops; the art association has been going since 1914 and the Fine Arts Work Center since 1968; the painting colony dates to 1898, when Charles Hawthorne opened his school here and discovered what the light at the end of a sandbar does. In the evening Commercial Street becomes a slow parade — drag performers barking their own shows, a lobster boat unloading, someone playing piano through an open door.

It is also, and has been for generations, one of the great LGBTQ+ destinations in the United States. Carnival week in August is the largest event of the year and the town is busy from June to September. Out of season it contracts to a village of a few thousand with an unusually good restaurant scene for its size.

For two people, the shape of a good stay: arrive by the seasonal Boston fast ferry rather than driving, since parking at the tip is genuinely difficult. Walk out to Long Point or take the shuttle boat across the harbour. Climb the Pilgrim Monument for the view down the whole hook. Take a late-afternoon dune tour over the Province Lands, which is the only legal way into that landscape. Then dinner and Commercial Street after dark.

Herring Cove, a few minutes out of town, is where the town goes to watch the sun set into the bay.

One honest note. August in Provincetown is a party, and a wonderful one, but it is not a quiet weekend. If you want the town and not the crowd, come in late September or early October.

If you have one slow day, spend it on the Old King's Highway rather than the highway.

Route 6A runs along the bay shore from the Sagamore Bridge through Sandwich, Barnstable, Yarmouth Port, Dennis and Brewster, and it is a designated historic district for most of that length. The houses are the reason: full-Cape and half-Cape cottages, Federal and Greek Revival captains' houses built on money made in the coastal and China trades, most still lived in. Speed limits are low, there are no shoulders, and the whole thing takes an hour and a half if you never stop, which you will.

What to stop for: antique dealers and secondhand bookshops, which are thicker along this road than anywhere else on the Cape; the Sandwich boardwalk out over the marsh to Town Neck Beach; Heritage Museums and Gardens at Sandwich, which is a hundred acres and worth a whole morning; the marsh views around Barnstable where the road runs alongside Great Marsh; and the string of small galleries and farm stands between Dennis and Brewster.

The inns along 6A are the other reason to drive it. This is where the Cape keeps its old buildings — eighteenth and nineteenth century houses converted room by room, with a fireplace in the breakfast room and no lift. They are a different proposition from a beachfront hotel and they suit the shoulder season, which is when their rates fall.

Two evening ideas from the same road. The Cape Playhouse in Dennis has been running summer theatre since the 1920s and is among the oldest of its kind in the country, with a cinema alongside it whose ceiling carries a remarkable painted mural. And Rock Harbor in Orleans, at the eastern end, is the sunset.

Wellfleet is the name on the menu for a reason. The harbour there has a large tidal range and a mix of salt and fresh water, and the oysters grown in it are prized well beyond New England. Aquaculture racks line the flats, and in the town you can eat them within a couple of hours of the water. The annual oyster festival in October is the busiest weekend of the Wellfleet year.

The rest of the Cape's food follows the same logic: it is best when it is closest. Chatham and Provincetown both have working fleets, so fish is landed rather than trucked. Cape Cod Bay scallops, sea clams and, in the right season, bluefish and striped bass from boats you can see. Lobster rolls are everywhere and vary enormously; the honest advice is to buy them where the fishing boats are rather than where the gift shops are.

Two other local things worth seeking out. Cranberries are grown here commercially in bogs across the Upper and Mid Cape, flooded scarlet for the wet harvest through October, and they appear in everything from a chutney to a cocktail. And the Cape has a small wine and beer scene: a vineyard on the Outer Cape, brewers in Hyannis and elsewhere, and distilleries that have opened in recent years.

Two practical notes that matter more than any recommendation. In July and August, book dinner. Not on the day: several days out for anywhere with a reputation, and be prepared to eat at six or at nine. And between Columbus Day and Memorial Day, ring first. A very large share of Cape restaurants close entirely for the winter, and the ones that stay open change their days week by week.

A raw bar and a fire in late October is, for what it is worth, the best meal on this peninsula.

Great Island in Wellfleet is the best walk on the Cape and the most demanding: a loop of several miles out onto what was once an island, across tidal flats, past the excavated site of an eighteenth-century tavern, with views back across the harbour. There is no shade, no water and no shortcut, and parts of the route flood at high tide. Take the tide table, take water, allow most of a morning.

A late-afternoon dune tour over the Province Lands is the cheapest luxury on the Cape: an hour in a four-wheel drive through several square miles of shifting sand and beach grass, past the dune shacks where writers and artists have stayed for a century, with the light going long. You cannot drive in yourself; the tracks are permitted.

A guided paddle on Nauset Marsh or Pleasant Bay near high water gets you into the estuary system behind the outer beaches, which is invisible from every road and full of birds. Small groups only, and the tide decides the hour rather than you.

Golf at Highland Links in Truro, laid out beside Highland Light in the 1890s and among the oldest courses in the country, is nine holes of treeless links on a clifftop over the Atlantic. Even non-golfers should walk up for the view.

Theatre is better here than the population suggests: summer companies in Dennis, Wellfleet and Truro, plus year-round cinema in Chatham.

And a nor'easter in February, watched from a safe distance at Marconi or Nauset with the wind taking the tops off the waves, is a genuine reason to come out of season. Stay well back from the cliff edge. It is not a viewing platform.