Urban poetry

Here's one from last summer: two dogs standing guard while their owners take a break in Roger Williams Park in Providence.

Saturday reflections

A monster face smiles benignly out at the streets of Providence. This is the window at Big Nazo, a puppet-making and performing collective.

Urban poetry

That door looks as though it ought to be an exit, but there aren't any stairs, just that small balcony overlooking a rather grungy parking lot in Providence.

Urban poetry

The lettering is faded so you may not be able to read the sign, but this is The Tri-Store Bridge, in Providence.

This bridge linked three long-gone department stores -- Cherry & Webb, Gladdings and Shepard -- in what was once the retail center of downtown Providence. The Google tells me that the bridge was built in the late nineteenth century, so it would have been handy for the ladies in their long dresses to move from store to store without having to go out in the rain or snow.

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.

Providential architecture

Some of the very cool buildings, mostly around the Brown campus (those are the main gates in the first picture.)

Saturday reflections

It was blazing hot the day we walked around Providence, and most of the interesting sites are at the top of very steep hills, so air-conditioned art galleries were a welcome break.

Here's some of the art reflected in the very glossy floors at the Providence Art Club.

First Baptist

I've seen many churches called the First Baptist, but this one in Providence is the first First Baptist, founded by Roger Williams in 1638.

They didn't get around to building an actual church until 1775, and the result is the largest surviving wooden structure from Colonial America, according to the blurb on my tourist map.

The prominent spire is modeled after the one on St Martin in the Fields in London.

I've been queuing up Providence photos to post over the next week or two. It was probably my last weekend off until I go away on vacation next month, and I want to savor it as long as I can.

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.

Saturday reflections

An art exhibit on the Brown campus in Providence.

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.