The Graduate: February 2014

Monday, February 17, 2014

Newport, RI

Newport is know for a few things: Americas Cup, international tennis hall of fame and the largest collection of colonial homes. Today I got the chance to explore this amazing little city on the sea and all it has to offer.

To start the day off we explored three of the colonial mansions that have been preserved by the Newport preservation society. The grandiosity of these homes cannot be explained in words or in picture but I'll do my best to provide a synopsis.

The marble house - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble_House

70 000 dollars was spent on marble to give this house its namesake. The smallest of the house we saw, this one certainly had the most detail and even included a Chinese tea house in the back garden.

The elms - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elms_(Newport,_Rhode_Island)

This house was modelled after a mansion in France as a larger replica, with a whole third floor serving as the servants quarters.

The breakers - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Breakers

The breakers is a mansion built by the Vanderbilt's in 1983. This was the biggest mansion we visited and took two years to build overlooking the ocean. The highlights of this house included a fountain underneath the main stairs, a great hall and a games room. The beauty in this house is one we will probably never see built again in this lifetime.

We only visited 3 out of the thousands of homes that are built along the shore here. There are streets lined with mansions of this grandiosity. The history behind these houses is something unlike any other. There is more wealth on this one tiny island then in any other part of the world I've ever seen.

We followed up this adventure with walking around the main drag which sits right on the water where all the yachts come in to dock (clearly not in the winter). They have tons of lovely little shops and the view overlooking the marina is magnificent.

Newport will literally leave you speechless with all that is packed into it. This lovely town with mansions and history beyond all belief and views of New England that are spectacular. I highly recommend a visit to this quaint town.

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Becoming a Rhody

Thursday I left on a road trip from Hamilton to Rhode Island. It was a long 10 hour drive across three states (New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island). The worry of going on road trips in the winter is the weather and boy did we manage to get the short end of the stick. After making our way through New York, we hit a massive snowstorm through the whole state of Massachusetts and into Rhode island. An FYI about Massachusetts, they have very few snow plows or snow removal equipment. Despite the snow we made it into Wickford Rhode Island on Thursday night.

Friday we spent the day touring the small town of Wickford and other areas of Rhode Island including Providence. We saw some of a Brown university and the surrounding university town. We did some shopping at trader joes and ocean state job lots.

Saturday we started off the day by driving to Newport Rhode Island. We toured the area looking at all the mansions and the lovely coast line. After this we did the famous cliff walk in Newport despite the snow and ice covering the walk way. In the afternoon we made our way back to providence, as the snow started to fall. We spent the afternoon indoors exploring the mall and doing some good old American shopping. As the snow continued to fall we spent another evening bundled inside watching the olympics.

Sunday began by digging out of the snow fall before doing some more driving around seeing the beautiful sights of Rhode Island. This was followed up by some more shopping adventure at job lots and Marshall's. In the afternoon we did some more exploring of the small town of Wickford with its quaint shops and old historic houses on the water.