Urban poetry

This “public parklet” is a small covered pavilion on one of the main streets in Newport. No one was actually sitting there though -- maybe it just looked too perfect to use -- despite shady seating and the Newport Creamery nearby. This would be a perfect place to sit and enjoy your ice cream.

Urban poetry

One of the quaint Colonial communication devices in Newport.

Random things I saw in Newport

The International Tennis Hall of Fame, which occupies a large chunk of downtown Newport, and a book in a shop window that made us laugh.

If you can't read the title, it's How to Split Wood, Shuck an Oyster, and Master Other Simple Pleasures. Somehow I doubt that anyone in the market for those crystal candleholders next to it is really interested in learning how to split wood.

Newport Tower, close up

Enigmatic, maybe not. But it is an odd thing to see among all the colonial buildings.

Touro Park

This beautiful cherry tree isn't the main draw in this Newport park. It was also the site of a now-demolished mansion built by Benedict Arnold, the first colonial governor of Rhode Island, and great-grandfather of the traitorous general.

The stone structure in the lower right corner of this picture is the Newport Tower, the remains of the windmill built in the mid-seventeenth century. Or so the scientists with all their fancy carbon dating claim; there are numerous theories about Vikings, Chinese sailors, and the Knights Templar actually being the builders. A small museum across the street calls it "the most enigmatic and puzzling single building in the United States."

More Salve Regina University

Salve Regina

If we hadn't skipped the Breakers, we might have just gotten back on the trolley afterwards and headed back downtown, and would have missed one of my favorite things in Newport: Salve Regina University, a private Catholic college built on seven former Gilded Age estates, just down the road from the Breakers.

I had fantasies of enrolling in one of their graduate programs -- I didn't care which one -- just so I could spend a couple of years living on that campus.

The Breakers

The most famous of the Newport mansions was built by the Vanderbilts in the 1890's, and has 70 rooms.

When we saw the back of the house from the Cliff Walk, I have to admit that $24.50 no longer seemed like such an outrageous price to pay for the privilege of paying a visit. I still wasn't interested in the interior, but I very much wanted to sit under one of the big shade trees on the velvety lawn and stare out at the ocean for awhile.

Then we walked around to the front and saw the long, long line waiting to get in, and I realized that I had much better things to spend $24.50 on after all.

One of the mansions

Views from the Cliff Walk

Cliff Walk

So, despite a rocky beginning, we did get to spend a day in Newport. I knew about the yachts and the famous Gilded Age mansions, but I didn't realize that it's also just a very charming New England town, full of old houses and little parks. There's a trolley, $6 for an all-day pass, that is blessedly air-conditioned, so you can actually see a lot in one day.

We decided to skip the mansions -- it was too gorgeous a day to spend inside looking at furniture. This is the Cliff Walk, which is described as a hiking trail, but is more like a crowded sidewalk with above-average views. (Okay, spectacular views.) You pass several of the famous mansions along the way, so you can admire the architecture and manicured lawns the size of football fields, but still enjoy the sea breezes.

Adventures, continued

And then maybe things happen for a reason. The best part of the ride to Newport was getting to know our fellow travelers.

    You live by Gramercy Park? I live two blocks from you!

    You grew up in San Francisco and moved to New York to work in publishing? Me too!

    You're from Illinois? I was born in Chicago!

    You're going to Africa? I used to live there!

These are our new friends Mary and Kent Jones, on the ferry back to Providence. Not only did Kent use the GPS on his phone to guide both the fill-in shuttle driver and the guy who drove us to Newport, when we got off the ferry and found that, big surprise, there was no shuttle waiting for us, he called an Uber.

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.

More pictures from the ferry

I took a ridiculous number of pictures for a weekend trip, and my first day back at work had me crawling into bed with a book shortly after dinner, so posting will be slow.

I know that these three pictures look like they were taken on three different days -- the sky's a different color in every picture -- but I spent most of my time on the ferry cleaning the salt spray from myself and my camera, and didn't pay enough attention to what I was doing.