If you know me at all, you know that I enjoy traveling. No, I’m not a crazy international traveler but I do love to get away from home and see new things. I also love to visit my beloved favorites again and again too. Now that my kids are older, I feel like they need to start seeing some new things. We all LOVE going to the beach, but felt like we needed to switch things up. We decided on a New England vacation this year.
To be completely honest, my husband has always wanted to see Fenway Park. I’ve learned that if I want him to do something different, I can usually talk him into it if there is some kind of sports involved. That’s how we decided on Boston. He’s actually the one who came up with the destination and I was more than happy with that since I had never been there.
We decided on our destination back in December and I started looking at it in January. Since we knew that we wanted to go see Fenway Park and a Red Sox game we looked at the dates that they would be in town, booked our flights and then our hotels.
The first leg of our New England vacation was Cape Cod. I have read books set on the Cape and have always had a fascination with it. When we decided we were going to Boston I knew we had to make it to Cape Cod also.
We flew into Boston and rented a car to drive out to the Cape. I had heard that traffic was crazy in Boston but I really was not prepared for just how bad it was. After we got our luggage and rental car I plugged our hotel into my phone for directions and it said it would take us over two hours to get there. I deleted the address and put it in again because I just knew that couldn’t be right since it was only 72 miles away. After we made our way out of the airport, I quickly figured out why it was going to take so long. Traffic was crawling. This continued for a good portion of our drive to Hyannis but once we finally arrived, it was totally worth it!
We decided to stay in Hyannis because it was centrally located to the towns I wanted to visit. Since we were only going to have two days, I had to narrow down exactly what I wanted to see. Chatham and Martha’s Vineyard were on the top of my list. Chatham was a quick 20 minute drive from Hyannis and the high speed ferry to Martha’s Vineyard is actually located in Hyannis.
Once we checked into the Courtyard in Hyannis, we dropped our luggage off and headed for Chatham. The Chatham Bars Inn is the most iconic of all the places in town and it is just beautiful. I forgot to take pictures when we first came in town, but here is a picture a night. It doesn’t do it justice!
We parked on Main Street and walked up and down the street and visited the shops and looked at the restaurants. After several people’s recommendation we ate at The Chatham Squire. It was a funky, eclectic place that locals frequent. The Fish and Chips and Lobster Bisque were both delicious.
The next day we headed down to the port and caught the Hy-Line high speed ferry from Hyannis to Martha’s Vineyard. The weather was absolutely beautiful! It took about an hour on the ferry but there was beautiful scenery to look at. We even saw the Kennedy Compound!
The ferry ports at Oak Bluffs. It is a cute town with a lot of gingerbread architecture. We caught the public transportation bus there over to Edgartown. When I had pictured Martha’s Vineyard in my mind, Edgartown is exactly what I saw.
While we were in Edgartown we walked around the streets, shopped and ate. We had the best day there. There were lots of cute little shops and restaurants. My son is a big fan of Vineyard Vines so we had to visit the original store while we were there!
We wanted to eat on the water and several suggested the Seafood Shanty. There is a downstairs area and an upstairs area. The upstiars had a beautiful view of the water. It was nice seeing all the boats while we ate. If it’s nice outside, definitely eat upsairs! I had the Lobster Roll and it was really good.
After lunch we walked around town some more and looked at houses and checked out the Ferry over to Chappaquiddick.
Once we had seen all of Edgartown we took the bus back to Oak Bluffs. We had a couple of hours to walk around town and check out the beach and another Vineyard Vines store! The water was absolutely freezing, but I had to check it out since I was there. Oak Bluffs was a pretty town, but I preferred Edgartown.
We took the last ferry back to Hyannis. Here was the veiw as we were leaving. This was probably my favorite day of our entire trip!
That pretty much wraps up our time in Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard. Next time I would like to visit Nantucket as well. We just didn’t have time to fit that one in. I will definitely be coming back!