The not-at-all-interesting route we took, courtesy of Google Maps.
Date of trip: July 12, 2009
This was a short trip, so I’ll make it a short post. (And we visited Short Beach, but I’ll talk about that in a minute.) There isn’t much to say about Nahant other than it is a nicer place to visit than Revere, but not nearly as nice as pretty much any other beach town along the North Shore. Think of Nahant as a poor man’s Marblehead, without the welcoming B&Bs and scrumptious seafood restaurants.
For us travelers, Nahant had little to recommend. Throughout the island, parking was for locals only, and we saw more than one scenic vista marred by No Parking signs. The local cops enforced this rule by circling the island and pouncing on any riffraff who had the audacity to pull to the side of the empty road and look at the ocean. Move along, citizen. This ocean is not for you.
There were two beaches, however. Short Beach (point B on the map) was the smaller of the two. This beach seemed to be where the locals hung out; it was quiet and unassuming, with lots of families. One side of the beach was flanked with houses, with stairs leading right down to the water. We talked about how it would be a nice place to live, and also how we might actually be able to afford to live there (unlike many other places on the North Shore). Anyway, this is Short Beach.
Summer on Short Beach
After we visited Short Beach, we skirted around the island, staying close to the water. Eventually, we lost patience with not being able to park or even stop and get out of the car to take pictures, and we headed to the second beach, called Long Beach. A restaurant sits on the edge of Long Beach, and we had lunch there and enjoyed the ocean views. We ate in the pub: nothing special but not too bad. Jenny reviewed the experience on Yelp.
After lunch, we paid the $3 to park so that we could check out the beach. It was a gorgeous day. The sun was warm and comfortable. The beach itself was fairly crowded, so there was some trash, but I guess that comes with the territory on a public beach. I didn’t mind much. We walked about half the length of the beach, and it was a good place to be. I saw this seagull there.
Landing Gear Down