Inn at Cape Cod

Your adventures during your Cape Cod vacation this season may to some extent be influenced by the advice your innkeeper can give you.  Guests will quite often have preplanned their itinerary with or without this complimentary service, but may need just a gentle nudge in one direction or another to decide whether to go whale-watching, spend a day on the beach or perhaps visit Provincetown.  That help in deciding how best to spend the day may, as far as the whale-watching option is concerned, come from listening to the animated accounts from fellow guests who went whale-watching the previous day. This takes place over a leisurely breakfast, served on our terrace overlooking the Inn’s gardens.

Cape Cod is, after all, ranked in the top 10 whale encounter locations in the world. You may even catch sight of one or two from a suitable vantage point on the National Seashore. The Hyannis Whale Watch boat will take you out in comfort to Stellwagen Bank and provide an extremely knowledgeable commentary – yes you do need to take your camera! There is less need, though, for binoculars as some whale sightings will be close to the boat. You may even catch a rare glimpse of a right whale, which is currently one of the most endangered species. You are more likely to see humpback, minke and finback .

The twice-daily 4 hour excursions are ten minutes from our inn, and in our opinion they are the best. Particularly fitting is their sponsorship of IFAW, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, which does so much to preserve the whale population in New England amongst all its other commendable work across the globe. We hope you’ll find an hour to spare for IFAW’s visitor’s centre at the end of Summer Street in their new “green” international headquarters.

So the voyage of discovery continues with a day trip to the tiny island of Nantucket. You will want to go there to see more than the Whaling Museum, but no there can be no more poignant a start to your visit than a look at this fascinating and clever illustration of whaling, which was after all, largely responsible for establishing the thriving settlement of Nantucket in the 17th and 18th centuries. The voyage of the Essex from Nantucket inspired Herman Melville’s story of Moby Dick, and there is often a guided tour of the museum during which you can hear the story of this ill-fated voyage.

If you are now casting your mind back to your whale watching trip, you will doubtless be grateful that whaling is something from the past – at least in this part of the world.

So, if all this appeals to you and you’re planning to spend a few days on the Cape this year, be sure to allow plenty of time to follow the “whale trail”. Why not make your Cape Cod visit even more memorable by staying with us, at our historic Bed and Breakfast Inn? Hope to see you soon!