Going Coastal: Provincetown, Nantucket and the Hamptons
By • July 17, 2025 0 1530
The Atlantic Ocean off Long Island and Massachusetts is at its warmest in July and August. Even so, expect a shock when you step (or plunge) in. We Yankees like it that way, in good Puritan fashion, though in most cases our families showed up centuries after the Mayflower.
During the last Ice Age, the Laurentide Ice Sheet pushed a bunch of rocks as far south as Long Island. As the ice melted and retreated, it formed sandbanks and submerged the lowlands. Et voilá: a handful of dream-come-true summer destinations, including Provincetown, Nantucket and the Hamptons.
Provincetown
This dune-bordered Massachusetts village at the “fist” of Cape Cod — where the Pilgrims landed before shoving off for Plymouth — is a colorful world of its own. A seaside sibling of Greenwich Village, Provincetown has sustained a bohemian summer colony for a century. Its late 20th-century identity (like the Village’s) as a majority-LGBTQ community is fading, however.
Eugene O’Neill’s first produced play, “Bound East for Cardiff,” premiered in a former fish house on a Provincetown wharf in July of 1916 (the Provincetown Players decamped for Greenwich Village that fall). Among the artists who spent summers here: Helen Frankenthaler, Franz Kline and Mark Rothko. On Commercial Street, the main drag, are numerous galleries, as well as the Provincetown Art Association and Museum.
Though Provincetown boasts a few resort-type properties, most overnight visitors stay in bed-and-breakfasts, guest houses and inns; Edward Hopper’s 1945 night scene, “Rooms for Tourists,” shows one that’s still standing. The best way to soak up P-town’s casual, artsy lifestyle is to walk and bike everywhere. The beaches are pristine and serene water views, whether of bay or ocean, inescapable.
Unless you’re planning to explore the rest of the Cape, going direct from Boston to Provincetown via Cape Air or high-speed ferry is recommended.
Nantucket
From Hyannis on the “mid-Cape,” the 30-mile ferry ride to this breezy, flattened boomerang of an island takes either two and a quarter hours (with your car) or just one (on a high-speed, passenger-only boat). Half the size of Martha’s Vineyard, its Massachusetts neighbor to the west, Nantucket is an exceptionally well-preserved, increasingly gentrified (see recent New York Times article) maritime village of two centuries ago.
The name Nantucket comes from the Wampanoag language. The island’s sole inhabitants prior to the 1659 arrival of English settlers, the Wampanoag people were indispensable to Nantucket’s early dominance of the whale fishery (see “Moby Dick”). But by the late 19th century, due to disease, war, bondage and loss of their way of life, no Nantucket-born Wampanoag remained. (Today, there are federally recognized tribes on Cape Cod and the Vineyard.)
“First-time visitors to Nantucket this summer can look forward to a quintessential New England coastal experience, complete with scenic beaches, charming cobblestone streets and vibrant seasonal events like the Boston Pops beach concert [Aug. 9] and Sandcastle Contest [July 26],” Nantucket’s director of culture and tourism, Shantaw Bloise-Murphy, told The Georgetowner.
Have you seen cars with a sticker that reads ACK? American and Jet Blue fly from DCA to ACK (Nantucket Airport, now you know); United flies from IAD.
The Hamptons
No one would call the Hamptons Puritan, though the first European families to settle there were Puritans from Massachusetts.
These days, “The Hamptons” refers to two large towns on Long Island’s South Fork: Southampton, including Southampton village and other hubs, for example, Bridgehampton (upscale) and Hampton Bays (less so); and East Hampton, which, besides East Hampton village (Privet Hedge Central), comprises communities such as Springs — where Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner and Willem de Kooning painted — and Montauk. Montaukers insist that their tip-of-the-Fork community isn’t “The Hamptons.”
Though mingling with others of one’s elite status is a major draw, there are good reasons for the rest of us, absent private aircraft or superyacht, to fight the traffic, ride one of the dedicated bus lines or the LIRR or fly to MacArthur Airport, still 50 miles away. You can even go partway by sea — actually, by Sound — driving to New London, Connecticut, and putting your vehicle on the ferry to the North Fork.
First: exceptional scenic beauty — dwarf pines, scrub oaks, saltwater marshes, grassy dunes with beach plums, ocean views with high surf and, if you like that sort of thing, mansions blocked by greenery. Second: museums — notably the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton’s Water Mill section and the Pollack-Krasner House, the Thomas & Mary Nimmo Moran Studio and Guild Hall in East Hampton. And third: the fashion-magazine vibe generated by all those high-end boutiques and restaurants.
