Two trips, three towns, an August report
Aug. 27th, 2013 04:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drwexWe're back from our family trip to Cape Cod; earlier this month we took an adult vacation to VT.
To sum up, I think it goes this way:
- Woodstock, VT, is a tourist town. The business of the town is tourism and they take their business seriously.
- Dennis, MA (and really most of Cape Cod) is a town where tourists visit. People here have work to do and entertaining tourists is incidentally part of it.
- Provincetown, MA is a tourist trap. I mean that in the nicest possible way, but really the town exists in order to lure tourists and encourage them to part with their money as efficiently as possible.
Earlier this August we took advantage of the kids being at sleepaway camp and went up to Woodstock, VT for a kid-free weekend. We stayed at a B&B run by a lovely (if slightly dotty) British couple who have "Keep Calm and Carry On" signs outside and an original Fawlty Towers cast album framed inside. Their B&B does not take children/families - it's a place one goes to get away from the kids.
The couple were wonderful and we enjoyed our time in Woodstock. We took an impromptu three-hour hike up a mountain that led to many pictures of mushrooms (to be posted later) and to the discovery that wet rocks are slippery. Ow. Fortunately I had stowed the camera not thirty seconds before taking my first tumble and I didn't injure myself all that much. We had good timing luck throughout the trip.
Vermont in general defines "artisinal": we dined at a restaurant (excellent, four stars) where they have a glass-blowing shop in the basement and make all their own glassware. We wandered into a grocery store to pick up some supplies and found a woman giving out samples of her own creations: alcohol-based jellies. If you come to the Scotch tasting this year we'll have them out, as we ended up getting three or four jars. We went to a wine tasting where the wine-maker showed off their products and explained how they handled their short growing season - buying grapes they can't manage to grow, etc. We had lunch at a brewery that makes hands-down the best double IPA I've ever tasted. We visited a shop where the owner makes all his own drums and even didgeridoos.
The point of artisinal products is that you're paying for quality. Neither the products nor the prices are cheap. Hand-crafting and the level of care and attention to detail in the products are a large part of the attraction and the idea is to sell them to people (tourists) who want that sort of quality and don't mind paying for it. It's a serious business, and Woodstock does it well.
This past week we took our annual family trip, this year to Cape Cod. We had originally planned to stay in/near Provincetown but the end of August is Carnival there so we stayed mid-cape in Dennis. The place we stayed advertised itself as a "B&B" but it was really a converted family-run motel. Nice enough, but unlike in VT nobody was cooking breakfasts there. You got packaged cereals and baked goods, plus some hard-boiled eggs.
The way you know towns like Dennis are real towns is that the streets are chock-a-block with signs both for and against the construction of a Lowe's in town. My visual estimate was that the "no" side had more signs out but that didn't tell you much about the actual population. The real people who live there definitely suffer from (and with) the tourism. We ate dinner one night at an outdoor-seating restaurant - essentially a big seafood shack - that is threatened with closure because the raucous nature of the restaurant disturbs the neighbors. Turns out the "neighbors" are people who rent places for a few days or weeks in the summer, not full-time residents. The restaurant is run by locals who are serious about their business and unhappy that the tourists are threatening to shut them down over a silly thing like peace and quiet. One town over we saw a craft fair set up in a field where a sign asked for peoples' help to preserve the field in its current state rather than having it taken over for development of more time-shared condos.
Dennis and the surrounding towns have lots of inns and motels and restaurants that survive on the tourist trade, but there are few actual artisans. We spent a fun afternoon in the glass workshop of one, a fellow who chatted with us and let us watch as he got his materials set up for production of glass candy-cane ornaments. He was a nice guy and we learned a lot from watching and hearing his explanations, but he's clearly a rarity in that part of the world.
While my folks were at the aforementioned craft fair and flea market, we decided to take a family trip up to Provincetown. We ended up spending half a day there, which was just about right. P'town was full of folk in for Carnival and the usual contingent of tourists. We walked about 3/4 of the town's main drag (pun intended) and saw lots of food establishments (mm, Portugese bakery!) and lots of shops. Almost everything was mass-produced and designed to be sold to tourists at tourist prices. We ended up making only one major purchase - at the game store because the kids had run out of things to do and were bored.
At this store I had to help one of the girls behind the counter explain to the other salesgirl who George Takei was, since I was wearing my "It's OK to be Takei" pride shirt. Both girls were young so I guess it's not surprising they didn't know who he is, but... really. I doubt you'd find anyone working at a game store in Camberville who didn't know. That's the difference: in Camberville the purpose of a game store is to sell games to gamers; in P-town it's to sell stuff to bored tourists.
That said, the best thing about P-town was definitely the people. And the puppies. Oh so many puppies to play with! Friendly people with the friendly dogs, and everyone walking the streets was smiling and generally in a good mood. Even the guy who was stuck directing traffic at the lot where we parked was friendly and helpful. Maybe that's how the town is generally; maybe that's because Carnival had put people in a good frame of mind. Either way it made for a really enjoyable afternoon.
So that's my summer, in sociological terms. How was your summer?
To sum up, I think it goes this way:
- Woodstock, VT, is a tourist town. The business of the town is tourism and they take their business seriously.
- Dennis, MA (and really most of Cape Cod) is a town where tourists visit. People here have work to do and entertaining tourists is incidentally part of it.
- Provincetown, MA is a tourist trap. I mean that in the nicest possible way, but really the town exists in order to lure tourists and encourage them to part with their money as efficiently as possible.
Earlier this August we took advantage of the kids being at sleepaway camp and went up to Woodstock, VT for a kid-free weekend. We stayed at a B&B run by a lovely (if slightly dotty) British couple who have "Keep Calm and Carry On" signs outside and an original Fawlty Towers cast album framed inside. Their B&B does not take children/families - it's a place one goes to get away from the kids.
The couple were wonderful and we enjoyed our time in Woodstock. We took an impromptu three-hour hike up a mountain that led to many pictures of mushrooms (to be posted later) and to the discovery that wet rocks are slippery. Ow. Fortunately I had stowed the camera not thirty seconds before taking my first tumble and I didn't injure myself all that much. We had good timing luck throughout the trip.
Vermont in general defines "artisinal": we dined at a restaurant (excellent, four stars) where they have a glass-blowing shop in the basement and make all their own glassware. We wandered into a grocery store to pick up some supplies and found a woman giving out samples of her own creations: alcohol-based jellies. If you come to the Scotch tasting this year we'll have them out, as we ended up getting three or four jars. We went to a wine tasting where the wine-maker showed off their products and explained how they handled their short growing season - buying grapes they can't manage to grow, etc. We had lunch at a brewery that makes hands-down the best double IPA I've ever tasted. We visited a shop where the owner makes all his own drums and even didgeridoos.
The point of artisinal products is that you're paying for quality. Neither the products nor the prices are cheap. Hand-crafting and the level of care and attention to detail in the products are a large part of the attraction and the idea is to sell them to people (tourists) who want that sort of quality and don't mind paying for it. It's a serious business, and Woodstock does it well.
This past week we took our annual family trip, this year to Cape Cod. We had originally planned to stay in/near Provincetown but the end of August is Carnival there so we stayed mid-cape in Dennis. The place we stayed advertised itself as a "B&B" but it was really a converted family-run motel. Nice enough, but unlike in VT nobody was cooking breakfasts there. You got packaged cereals and baked goods, plus some hard-boiled eggs.
The way you know towns like Dennis are real towns is that the streets are chock-a-block with signs both for and against the construction of a Lowe's in town. My visual estimate was that the "no" side had more signs out but that didn't tell you much about the actual population. The real people who live there definitely suffer from (and with) the tourism. We ate dinner one night at an outdoor-seating restaurant - essentially a big seafood shack - that is threatened with closure because the raucous nature of the restaurant disturbs the neighbors. Turns out the "neighbors" are people who rent places for a few days or weeks in the summer, not full-time residents. The restaurant is run by locals who are serious about their business and unhappy that the tourists are threatening to shut them down over a silly thing like peace and quiet. One town over we saw a craft fair set up in a field where a sign asked for peoples' help to preserve the field in its current state rather than having it taken over for development of more time-shared condos.
Dennis and the surrounding towns have lots of inns and motels and restaurants that survive on the tourist trade, but there are few actual artisans. We spent a fun afternoon in the glass workshop of one, a fellow who chatted with us and let us watch as he got his materials set up for production of glass candy-cane ornaments. He was a nice guy and we learned a lot from watching and hearing his explanations, but he's clearly a rarity in that part of the world.
While my folks were at the aforementioned craft fair and flea market, we decided to take a family trip up to Provincetown. We ended up spending half a day there, which was just about right. P'town was full of folk in for Carnival and the usual contingent of tourists. We walked about 3/4 of the town's main drag (pun intended) and saw lots of food establishments (mm, Portugese bakery!) and lots of shops. Almost everything was mass-produced and designed to be sold to tourists at tourist prices. We ended up making only one major purchase - at the game store because the kids had run out of things to do and were bored.
At this store I had to help one of the girls behind the counter explain to the other salesgirl who George Takei was, since I was wearing my "It's OK to be Takei" pride shirt. Both girls were young so I guess it's not surprising they didn't know who he is, but... really. I doubt you'd find anyone working at a game store in Camberville who didn't know. That's the difference: in Camberville the purpose of a game store is to sell games to gamers; in P-town it's to sell stuff to bored tourists.
That said, the best thing about P-town was definitely the people. And the puppies. Oh so many puppies to play with! Friendly people with the friendly dogs, and everyone walking the streets was smiling and generally in a good mood. Even the guy who was stuck directing traffic at the lot where we parked was friendly and helpful. Maybe that's how the town is generally; maybe that's because Carnival had put people in a good frame of mind. Either way it made for a really enjoyable afternoon.
So that's my summer, in sociological terms. How was your summer?
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Date: 2013-08-27 10:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-27 11:30 pm (UTC)