My husband and I, along with our 1 year old baby, planned on arriving to Nantucket via the ferry in the morning. We will be renting a cottage in town. Unfortunately, we cannot check in to our rental until 4pm. Is there somewhere we can store our bags for our week-long trip? If not, any other ideas on our options? Thank you in advance.

I do not know of any public luggage storage in town -
my suggestions would be to speak to the realtor you rented from (if it is an on island agency, perhaps they will let you leave your luggage in their office ) - if it is an off island or online agency, perhaps you can make arrangements to leave the luggage at the rental in a garage or barn or the corner of one room -

if you are entering at 4pm, and if there are previous rentors, I would assume they are leaving early in the day and a cleaning crew coming in - so they usually don't mind you leaving it somewhere in the house -

Even though you cannot check in until 4PM, the previous guests probably have to vacate by 10 or 11AM. Check with the agent about dropping your bags off.

Good suggestions. There is no public bag storage since 9/11. In a pinch, you could leave it with the bellman at the White Elephant, but talking to the real estate agent is a much better suggestion.

A really good rental agent will pick up your bags and hold them for you until you can get into the house. A great rental agent will see if they can get you into the house early, since you have a baby. An okay realtor will let you store the bags at their office until you can get into the house. If they are right downtown, this is okay but you will probably have plenty of stuff.

When you talk to the rental agent, please do not sound entitled or get angry. You sound like a really nice reasonable person, and you should let that come through. By this time in the summer, people have had about all the entitlement they can handle.

Please let us know what happens when you ask.

Thank you all for your response. We rented the cottage directly with the owner. She said that a week prior to our arrival the caretaker of the home would be calling us and that we could ask her if we could leave our luggage in the house if the cleaners were done with their work. So a definite "maybe"

The other option we had was to just bring our car on to the island and leave our belongs in the car and ground ourselves with the lay of the island before the cottage was ready. Initially we didn't think we needed the car as the cottage is in town (10 min walk to Main St), but with a baby and the check in/out time perhas it's worthwhile? Any thoughts? (We will be there the first week of September.)

Of course, we could always just walk around Hyannis and take a later ferry.

Thank you again.

Taking your car will cost you $380 plus $66 for the two adults, round trip, on the slow ferry. You will be able to get a reservation TO Nantucket then, but it may be a problem getting one OFF Nantucket.

If the caretaker calls you, fine and dandy. Hyannis isn't very interesting, so hang out in Sandwich or along 6A instead until close to the time of your ferry.

If you could tell me where the house is, I could check it out for you. You would be crazy to give the address to a stranger on the internet, so don't do it, but if you told me the street, I could tell you whether it is really a ten minute walk from Main Street.

The fare for a passenger car round trip is $380 (just the car). You would want to check about parking in the vicinity of your cottage. Parking in town and elsewhere on Nantucket will be quite the challenge. Advance reservations are absolutely essential that time of year, and you should immediately check for space on your dates.

A car is not necessary on Nantucket. For distances, it's usually better to take a taxi or bring/rent bicycles.

If you plan to prepare meals during your visit, find out how far you'll be from the grocery store, etc.

I would wonder why the cleaning would have to be finished for you to be able to drop off your bags. Whenever we've stayed in a vacation rental, we've always been able to drop the bags off on the porch or in the corner of a room while the cleaning people were there. It sounds a bit odd to me that the owner is leaving this up to the caretaker?

You don't need a car for Nantucket - with a baby you likely aren't going to do bikes - but there is an excellent bus system - we've used it many visits to the island and it gets you to other parts of island, beaches, etc -

of course, you have to be willing with a 1 yr old, to take her on without a car seat, same in most taxis -
or rent a jeep for a day if you want to be able to drive yourselves around the island

with your stroller, you can walk to children's beach or even jetty beach -

we rent the same house every year onMVand are always able to drop our bags off if we get there early while the cleaners are finished -

every person who rents , rents for 2-3 weeks and we are in charge of calling the cleaning crew and getting them in the day we leave and 90% of the time, someone is dropping their bags in some corner of the house or deck

About the cleaning stuff, caretakers, etc.

The caretaker is responsible for the physical condition of the house at the time of turnover, which is classically 4 PM.

The caretaker is almost certainly caretaking a number of different properties for different owners. Most properties turn over at the same time.

If LY wants to get into her rental or to drop her bags early -- a perfectly reasonable request -- it is most likely that others have the same wish.

The caretaker can't be in two places at once. If s/he is handling a Sconset rental, a town rental, and a Madaket rental, his/her ability to meet the renter at the property early is limited. That's why the caretaker is going to call the renter to see if they can work this out.

Similarly, the cleaners, most of whom will not speak English, will have a number of houses to clean between checkout and checkin. They are not going to want to clean around someone's luggage and baby stuff and they aren't going to want to have to slow down to answer a lot of questions, assuming the renter speaks enough Brazilian Portugese to ask them. We all want our rentals to be perfectly clean with no evidence that anyone else has ever been in the house, so these ladies are under great pressure.

Many real estate agents would simply say "No. If you take the 1:55 steamship fast ferry, you will get here at 3, and there won't be any wait."

The caretaker and owner are trying to accomodate her, but her rental is at the end of a long chain!