Ptown Harbor

Steps from Commercial Street shops and restaurants. The harbor beach (also called Flyer's Beach) is nothing fancy, but the convenience of swimming and then walking to lunch is hard to beat in P-town.

Ptown Harbor — or, depending on whom you ask, Flyer's Beach, West End Beach, or just "the beach off Commercial Street" — is the working waterfront of Provincetown turned into a long, narrow band of harbor sand and pebble. It's not a destination beach, and there's no lifeguard, no bathhouse, no parking lot of its own; what it is is an instantly available swim or wade ten steps off the busiest street on Cape Cod. The sand is mixed with shell and occasional rope and barnacle fragments from the working fishing fleet anchored just offshore; the swimming is shallow and warm-ish; the views are uniquely Provincetown — the Pilgrim Monument behind you, the Long Point Light across the harbor, schooners and whale-watch boats coming and going. People drop their bikes, swim ten minutes, dry off, and walk into a gallery. At low tide the harbor pulls back to reveal a wide flat that's the best place in the world to watch summer thunderstorms roll in over Truro.