Teeny and the Bee: Picture Perfect Provincetown!

This summer we lucked out and got to take a very short, unplanned, inexpensive trip to Provincetown. Our first time! I lived in Boston for six years and somehow managed never to get to the Cape. And we loved it so much we didn't want to come home.

What happened was this: we were unable to take our scheduled family vacation because Bee got coxsackie. It was terrible, but before we were schedule to go, she was pretty much recovered and in my mind the trip was back on. But then Teeny got sick too. I couldn't bear to risk getting the other family babies (not to mention the other family adults) exposed and potentially sick too, so we bowed out. And then I happened to be skimming our neighborhood parenting email list daily digest as I usually do shortly before clicking delete. I noticed an email posted from a neighbor saying they were trying to unload a rental in Provincetown they'd paid for but were unable to use. I inquired politely how much they'd paid and nearly choked when I got her reply. I sent my regrets immediately, but not two minutes later received a response saying "Name your price. We can't go at all, so whatever you can pay and for however long would be a real help."

I still couldn't bring myself to come up with even a chunk of what they'd paid, so I hemmed and hawed and finally she said, we're happy to take it for $X. Seriously? Okay. Sold. With the exception of not getting to see family, we were getting a shorter version of what we signed up for this summer - a beach getaway in a private house. Only this was a lot closer and we had the spot to ourselves so we wouldn't get anyone sick if we weren't fully recovered. So we made hasty last minute plans to throw together a quickie vacation together for the days we'd scheduled off sandwiched between a trip to a local beach and time with other family.

And so we went. And traffic was terrible, and it wasn't a long enough stay. Both Johnny and I felt so conspicuously straight! (We are both definitely NOT but who would know?) We had fun laughing at ourselves and remembering Life Before Kids. And we loved almost everything about the town and the place we stayed in. We were half a block from Commerical Street right in the center of the town. A block from the beach, walking distance of everything else. Our kids slept horribly the first night but were fine after that since they had their own room. Now we know. Have two bedrooms? We'll travel. We could have stayed a week, two, even three. When can we go back?

I took a zillion pictures. They can document this mini-vacation better than I can, so here they are.

The first morning Bee and I let Johnny and Teeny sleep in. We wandered around looking for birds, snails and other interesting things. It's 5:30 am in these and this is the only time you will see Commerical Street this empty.

We walked to the beach.

We looked for shells and rocks. Big Bird got pretty wet. Bee too. The water was FREEZING.

We found a tiny beach area that was free and family-friendly. Teeny loved the sand. She thought it was food!

Second early morning just me and the Bee (and Teeny too this time). This is a waterfront food court, but it wasn't open yet so we got to sit in the big chairs alone.