Having explored Providence and the areas due south and north east of it, I was left with the north west, south west and south east with only 2 days remaining before moving on to New Hampshire. It turned out that it was impossible to reach the north east by bus and return the same day as the only buses are designed to get people to and from work in Providence.

So I next decided to go south east and visit Newport, and the summer homes of extremely wealthy Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

There is a fast ferry service from Fox Point, but it was actually quicker to take the bus, and once in Newport there was a free bus to all the likely sites of interest.

Newport itself is more like an English town than others I have seen so far in New England, in that it has quite narrow streets of both shops and houses in the oldest parts.

It is very difficult to get good photos due to the overwhelming number of cars.

The obvious other difference is a very old wooden baseball stadium right near the centre of the town, but I forgot to take its photo!

The mansions are mostly along the coast line. Several are open to the public, mostly in the ownership of The Preservation Society of Newport County. I decided one would be sufficient and visited the grandest of them all, ‘Breakers’ built by Cornelius Vanderbilt between 1893 and 1895.

Cornelius Vanderbilt

A fire had destroyed a previous house on the site. It is huge, totalling 139,300 sq.ft and has 70 rooms.

This is the house as approached from the road.

The following photos are all from the ground floor. Everything is designed for show rather than comfort, and to impress with the amount spent on it. Basically high class bling.

I will leave you to work out the ‘purpose’ of each room.

Upstairs there is more attention to comfort, with very modern (for the time) bathrooms. However the bedrooms all had at least 3 doors and seemed more like passages than rooms. Also the ladies’ bedrooms seemed to be combining bedroom and boudoir in one room. Some had as many as 12 chairs for visitors! Maybe the visitors’ bedrooms on the floors above were more practical.

Here is a small selection.

You may have gathered that it was not much to my taste, but I did like the following.

This is a gallery.

This is an open air upper loggia. I think normally it would have a fresh breeze off the sea, but the day I was there the wind was coming off the land, so the sea was calm and the loggia was humid and warmer than the inside rooms (which are not air conditioned). Originally it would have had plants such as potted palms.

The kitchen was probably a dream to work in.

The house was named ‘Breakers’ for the waves breaking on the shore at the bottom of the cliff in front. There is a cliff walk of about 3 miles along the cliffs. ‘Breakers’ is about half way along and I walked from there to the town end of the walk.

Originally there were grand houses all the way that I walked, but the next 21 houses became Salve Regina College in 1934, and Salve Regina University in 1991.

This was originally a private Roman Catholic Girls College, but is now a mixed university with about 2,700 students. I suspect that it is for wealthy students who are not particularly academic. It has had some new buildings added.

Viewed from the cliff walk

The end of the cliff walk looking back.

This is from the same place in the other direction looking across a narrow spit to the town of Newport Beach.

The next day I took a bus south west as far as I could get, to Galilee, where the Block Island Ferry leaves from. Block Island is about 12 miles off shore.

The weather forecast was not good, and it did rain during the journey there, but stopped shortly after I arrived.

I believe there is also a slow, traditional ferry.

Fortunately this piece of coast is owned by the state and they have decided that it will remain a fishing port. Most of the other ports have been developed for tourism by private enterprise and are no longer fishing ports.

Just across the water is Jerusalem!

All the New England coast is famous for lobsters, and Galilee is one of the main ports for them.

I have yet to try a ‘lobster roll’, which I am assured will be delicious, as so far the cheapest I have found costs $29, which is somewhat over my budget. Maybe they will be cheaper in Maine when I get there.

Galilee also has a beach, and there are many more along the coast to the east.

This part was public, but just to the left of this photo was private, and belonged to a restaurant. Most of the best beaches seem to be private.

Galilee was very much to my liking, with a really salty tang in the air.

I finally tried the Rhode Island specialities of clam chowder and clam cakes. Clam chowder comes in 3 varieties, normal (with cream), red (with a smidgeon of tomato) and clear (basically a fish broth). I tried the red which was delicious. Not much clam in any of them, the base being potato.

Clam cakes are a very light dough balls (with a barely detectable amount of minced clam), dipped in batter and deep fried. Each was nearly the size of a tennis ball and a portion was six of them!

I would certainly have clam chowder again, but clam cakes come in the ‘OK but boring’ category for me.

On the way there and back, the bus passed through the first farms I had really seen in Rhode Island. They are mostly more market gardens than farms, and I did not see any animals at all.

I believe that most of what mixed farms exist are in the north west of the state which I did not visit.

Next stop New Hampshire!