For someone who has lived in New England her entire life, it took me 31 years to go to Cape Cod. Josh went in 2020 during COVID with a friend—they rented a place and explored the mostly empty area—and was more than happy to go back with me. Plus it gave him an opportunity to explore the entire peninsula during normal times.

We rented a cute cottage through Airbnb for the time we would be there. Check in was after 3:00 p.m. and it would take us a little more than 2.5 hours to drive there, so we made sure we were all packed up and ready to go by 12:30 p.m. Driving in on a Sunday afternoon was a pretty good idea since we were missing everyone leaving to go back to work on Monday.

We got into the Airbnb with no problem and unpacked a bit before hanging out. Since we didn’t eat much prior to leaving, we grabbed an early dinner at Sea Dog Brew Pub. This is when I ordered my first beer in a restaurant all year, and of course, I had to get the Sea Dog blueberry, which comes with blueberries in the glass! For dinner, I got a chicken bacon ranch sandwich, and Josh got a Cape Cod Reuben.

After dinner, we walked around the neighborhood where the cottage was. It was pretty residential, and we found a nice spot by a pond to watch the sun going down.

Then we took our first of three (!!!) trips to Cape Cod Creamery, which was right down the road from the Airbnb; I’m not kidding you—it took us one minute to walk there. All of the ice cream is homemade there and named after places in the Cape.

I got Chapin Cherry Chocolate, and Josh got Sandy Neck Snickers.

Then we headed back to the Airbnb to watch CohhCarnage—the YouTube video game streamer whose videos we’ve been watching together since like February. It was something easy to put on in the background at night. (We’re watching his playthrough of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, which he pitches as a peasant simulator game.)

Like usual, when I’m in a new place, I have trouble sleeping. Folks, I love my bed and hate sleeping anywhere it’s not. Meanwhile, Josh could sleep out in the woods with nothing and be fine. So it was a bit of a struggle that first night.