Like many native Californians, most of my vacations have been to Hawaii and Mexico plus a few road trips to Arizona. Vacationing on the East Coast really wasn’t a consideration, other than a Disney World trip when my son was a kid and a short cruise to the Bahamas.
Still, I’ve always wanted to see New England with its iconic rugged coastlines, quaint villages, lighthouses and historic East Coast architecture. This year, my husband and I mixed it up and vacationed in Boston, Cape Cod and Rhode Island on an eight-day cruise with American Cruise Lines. We chose this small-ship luxury line because massive cruise ships with thousands of passengers, noise, germs, cheesy art auctions and a smoky casino are unappealing. We sought better ports, better service, quiet and a higher level of luxury. This cruise delivered all of this and more.
Our ship, the American Glory, is a catamaran built in 2023 that accommodates only 109 passengers. It’s a higher price point, but American Glory had bigger and nicer cabins; and the cruise included all meals; beer and wine with meals and cocktails in the evening; WiFi; all fees, transfers and tips; and most shore excursions and shore transportation. Smaller ships can dock at places the larger ships can’t, too. Our cruise, called the Cape Codder, didn’t need tenders so there was no waiting with thousands of other passengers for a tender to go ashore.
We got to know the lovely staff by name and every staff member was warm and friendly. The food was high-quality, classic American fare with regional specialties like lobster and crab offered at several meals.
Our ship left from Boston — the heart of colonial Massachusetts and the perfect city to start our trip through history. We flew to Boston two days early for sightseeing. We started at the USS Constitution and the Constitution Museum at the Charlestown Navy Yard. It was a thrill to walk inside “Old Ironsides,” to touch the cannons and grog barrels, and learn how the sailors lived. The USS Constitution was built between 1794 and 1797, one of six original frigates authorized for construction by the Naval Act of 1794. The ship saw action during the War of 1812. Admission to the Constitution and the museum are free.
For lunch we enjoyed the best cup ever of lobster bisque, topped with large chunks of fresh lobster, at Boston’s famous Faneuil Hall food marketplace, where townspeople in the mid- 1700s debated starting a revolution against the British. In the late afternoon we caught a citywide driving and harbor tour on an amphibious boat with Boston Duck Tours. We learned more American history in one day than a high school class could cover in a semester, and Uber provided convenient transportation around Boston.
Our first stop on the cruise was Provincetown, a small, quaint vacation resort town on the end of Cape Cod known for its towering Pilgrim Monument and LGBTQ+ community. We took a trolley tour for an overview and to see the dunes, then walked around the old shopping district. Small but charming, Provincetown was bustling and we enjoyed seeing historic buildings and art galleries.
We then sailed to Plymouth, where the Pilgrims landed in 1620. We spent an incredible morning at the Plimoth Patuxet (Plimoth Plantation), a living history museum with a 17th century English village and a historic homesite of the native Wampanoag people. Staffers in period dress, including a Pilgrim woman in her garden and modern-day Wampanoag people, demonstrated growing vegetables, canoe building, cooking quail and onion soup, and crafts to show how the native people and the Pilgrims lived in the early to mid 1600s.
In the afternoon, we toured the inside and outside of a full-sized replica of the Mayflower ship, called the Mayflower II, then walked over to see the famous Plymouth Rock. Rumor has it the large cracked boulder in the Plymouth Rock monument isn’t really the first stone the Pilgrims touched when they landed in Plymouth … but who knows? The rock is a huge tourist attraction and it was fun to see – real or not. Other interesting sites in Plymouth include the Grist Mill, the Plimoth General Store and the National Monument to the Forefathers. Dedicated in 1889, this 81-foot-tall monument honoring the Pilgrims is the largest freestanding solid granite monument in the nation.
Our next port was the dock at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy in Buzzards Bay, on the other side of the cape where the Industrial Revolution took hold in the state in the 1880s. To reach Buzzards Bay, we had sailed overnight through the Cape Cod Canal, a scenic 7.4-mile shortcut between Cape Cod Bay and Buzzards Bay that was built during the Depression. We were initially disappointed that we had missed viewing the sail through the canal, but we were pleasantly surprised on the cruise’s final day when we sailed back through it toward Boston in the late afternoon. We camped out on the top deck as we sailed through the canal, seeing beautiful homes and parkways and a unique train bridge that rises for ships to pass under and lowers to water level for trains. Only smaller and medium-sized ships can navigate this canal; large cruise ships cannot.
In Buzzards Bay, we toured the Heritage Museum and Gardens, and the Sandwich Glass Museum, both in Sandwich. All were delightful and we enjoyed a glass-making demonstration which showed how glass was made in the early days at the former Boston & Sandwich Glass Company factory, 1825-1888. The community of Sandwich was full of exquisite, historic and well-kept Cape Cod-style homes with blooming and colorful gardens. The area was lush, green and forested. As it turns out, late spring/early summer is the perfect time to tour New England. Temperatures when we traveled during the first week of June averaged in the low 70s and it didn’t rain once on our cruise.
Our next stop was in New Bedford, a center of the whaling and fishing industries in the 1800s. We toured the military ships docked at Battleship Cove then visited two more museums: the Glass Museum, which showcased art glass from many decades and is located in a stunning refurbished Victorian-era mansion, and the Whaling Museum, a must-see. The museum has a full-sized skeleton of a sperm whale, a large whaling ship replica, and many fascinating exhibits about whaling and whalers.
The next day, in Newport, Rhode Island, the cruise line hosted a lobster-bake luncheon extravaganza at Fort Adams State Park, with lunch served at tables with a buffet set up inside the massive fort. This signature “New England” experience was my first. Clams, whole lobsters, corn on the cob, potatoes and Portuguese sausage were cooked all morning in a pit in the ground like the indigenous people cooked: over hot rocks heated by fire with the food placed over a bed of local seaweed for seasoning. The cruise passengers stood around as local caterers explained the cooking process. The talk ended when they removed the coverings over the pile to reveal a huge mound of steaming food for the passengers and crew.
Lobster aside, it was super cool to eat lunch inside this fortification located at the mouth of Newport Harbor. “Construction began in 1824 and spanned decades, resulting in one of the largest and most complex fortifications of its kind in North America, designed to mount an impressive 468 cannons. It was an active post through numerous conflicts, including the Civil War, Spanish-American War, and both World Wars, playing a particularly significant role in World War II. Adding another layer to its history, the Commanding Officer’s residence, a Victorian-era home on the grounds, served as President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Summer White House,” according to the Visit Newport RI website.
After the lobster feast came a much-anticipated tour of the Breakers, the 70-room, 138,300-square foot Vanderbilt Mansion from the Gilded Age, built from 1893 to 1895. Opulence bordering on the obscene is the best way to describe the exterior and interior of this grand Newport summer “cottage” modeled after an Italian Renaissance palace and filled with fixtures and furnishings from Europe. Mansions and elaborate homes of the very wealthy — past and present — are all around Newport, so driving around the community offers an eye-popping look into their lives. The Breakers and many other Gilded Age mansions were built along Newport’s rocky shoreline and we enjoyed the Cliff Walk behind the homes to see the waterfront view.
There were plenty of waterfront views to enjoy the next day also at our final port, Martha’s Vineyard. Many celebrities today own homes here in the island’s coastal communities, but my husband and I felt Martha’s Vineyard wasn’t nearly as impressive as the other ports. The small downtown shopping district in Edgartown was crowded already. This tiny community of the ultra-wealthy swells in population to some 200,000 visitors during the summer months. Our tour bus took us around the entire island, including the beach where the movie “Jaws” was filmed. Most of the island’s interior is forest or farmland (although few crops are being grown any more, or so it seemed).
All in all, the Cape Codder offered an impressive itinerary with interesting excursions and excellent service from the cruise line. If you’ve been to Hawaii umpteen times, are a history buff, or enjoy museums and cool weather, consider a cruise around New England on a smaller ship for your next vacation.