I am a native in this world And think in it as a native thinks

Friday, July 7, 2017

Adventures always look better in the rear view mirror


Astute readers will have noticed that there aren't any pictures taken on the morning ferry ride from Providence to Newport. That's because there wasn't one -- or rather, there was a ferry, and it left for Newport as scheduled at 9:30 am. We just weren't on it.

There's a free shuttle that runs from several locations in downtown Providence to the ferry, and we were at the convention center stop early. Where we waited. And waited. We called the ferry company, but the customer service desk was closed for the holiday. Jayne was on hold with the main ferry office when a beat-up Providence city bus with a Not in Service sign pulled up and the driver announced that this was the super-duper emergency backup holiday shuttle. Hurray!

The only problem was that she'd never driven the route before, and she wasn't exactly sure where she was supposed to drop us off. And we had five minutes to get there. And so though we were later told that they had held the ferry as long as they could, we ran down the ramp to the landing just as it pulled away.

The next ferry wasn't for three hours, and since the ferry landing consists of a parking lot, a trailer and a Pepsi machine in basically the middle of nowhere, hanging out for three hours wasn't an attractive option. Especially since the 12:30 ferry was completely booked and there was no guarantee they'd even let us on it.

That's when one of the women selling tickets, now and forever to be known as Saint Lori of Providence, came to the rescue. She arranged for a van to pick the seven of us up and drive us to Newport, where we arrived at Perrotti Park only a couple of minutes after our ferry did.

Needless to say, those of us on the 5 o'clock ferry returning to Providence were in line by 4:30.

No comments:

Blog Archive