Live in the past
With all the homage to history, Nantucket is an island that lives in the past - and sometimes we forget that tripping over a few cobblestones does not a history lesson make.

JANE BREWSTER REID'S "ROWBOATS"AT THE NHAWHALING MUSEUM

The Nantucket Historical Association Whaling Museum currently has on display"The Way We Were," an arts exhibit documenting the years of the Nantucket Arts Colony.

"I think this is the best exhibit we've ever done, said the NHA's Judy Wodynsky of the exhibit, which includes "then and now" photographs of Nantucket town. "It shows how much we have and haven't changed."

For families, Wodynsky suggests Hands on History (daily from 1 - 4 p.m.), which allows kids to fashion the same crafts their counterparts would have made during Nantucket's whaling era.

For more hands on fun, the Maria Mitchall Association Aquarium boasts a "Touch Tank" that recently received its 6000th vistor in one summer, making a new museum record. The MMA Aquarium allows kids to have real-life interaction with indigenous sea creatures. (The musuem's Natural Science Center offers the same for creatures from the land.)

"At the touch tank, just to watch those little ones pick up those creatures, they're fearless. They have such looks of awe in their eyes," said the MMA's Linda Sonnonstein. "At Natural Science, they love interacting with animals, like snakes and turtles, in an up-close basis."

For adults travelling without any little visitors in tow, Sonnonstein suggests the Maria Mitchell House, which preserves Mitchell's home as it would have looked during the 19th century, and also the Egan Foundation's "Gutsy Gals" exhibit at the Coffin School (4 Winter Street), which pays tribute to the island's tradition of remarkable, can-do women, Maria Mitchell - first American female to discover a comet - included.