Provincetown, Massachusetts

The compact fishing village of Provincetown (or, as it's popularly known, "P-Town") is a gorgeous place, with silvery clapboard houses and gloriously unruly gardens lining the town's tiny, winding streets. Bohemians and artists have long flocked here for the dazzling light and vast beaches; in 1914 Eugene O'Neill established the Provincetown Playhouse in a small hut. Since the Beatnik 1950s, the town has also been a gay center, and today its population of five thousand rises tenfold in the summer. Commercialism, though rampant, tends to be countercultural: gay, environmentalist, and feminist gift shops join arty galleries, restaurants, and bars on the aptly named Commercial Street. However, strict zoning ensures that there are few new buildings in town. Albeit crowded and raucous from July through September, P-Town remains a place where history, natural beauty, and, above all, difference, are respected and celebrated.