I started my trip to New England with 7 days in Rhode Island. This is a photo of Downtown Providence from a pedestrian bridge over one of its rivers.

This is on a lovely sunny, hot day (high 80s F) but I arrived at the end of a very wet day, having taken 2 days travelling from Wirral.

I chose to fly from Liverpool to Dublin, stay overnight in an airport hotel (very expensive), then fly Dublin to Boston. I then took a commuter train for about 50 minutes to Providence. The second day was a long one, but by flying from Dublin I was able to clear US immigration and customs before I boarded the plane, so arriving at Boston all I had to do was collect my bag and walk out of the airport terminal. It did involve about three and a half hours at Dublin airport before the flight, which included 2 security check procedures as the US does not seem to trust the Irish. However the queues weren’t too long and it all went smoothly. Dublin is one of only a handful of airports in the world where pre-clearance to the US happens.

This is the house I stayed in, built in the 1860s in what was then an upmarket suburb of Providence. The area is still full of similar houses, many in multiple occupancy, but this one has been well restored recently and is now run as an AirBnB.

 

 

This is an adjoining street. Unusually for the US there are quite a lot of roundabouts in Rhode Island, though only on residential roads.

Primary elections take place at the end of September, so everywhere sprouts election placards for every post from State Governor down to Ward Councillor.

 

 

There is a fire station at the junction of the street with one of the main roads into the centre. Three very quaint fire engines. Every small area has a fire station, but as nearly all the houses in Rhode Island are built of wood, fires are quite frequent.

 

 

The surrounding area is now largely populated by South American immigrants, and in most of the shops many of the staff speak very little English. The Dominican and Columbian embassies were not far away. My Spanish is minimal, so it was sometimes difficult to find out what the items displayed actually were.

Providence was founded in 1836 when Roger Williams, a strict Baptist, decided that the settlements in Massachusetts were not strict enough, so negotiated for some land with the Naragansett tribe and founded a small settlement, on a river in what is now the Downtown (City Centre). Everywhere in Providence there are places named for him – a park, a university, memorial gardens etc etc.

I spent the first 2 days exploring Providence, before venturing further afield in the state. That will be dealt with in my next post.

Roger Williams Park was within walking distance, so I started there.

It is a huge park of nearly 1000 acres with many lakes and bridges and is well landscaped. However it is ruined (for me) by the number of roads which criss cross it. Even were dogs allowed off lead (which they aren’t except in small designated fenced ‘Dog areas’) they would not be safe as nowhere except the middle of the lakes is far from a road with fairly constant, albeit slow moving, traffic. If the traffic were restricted to the perimeter (as in Birkenhead Park) it would be a huge improvement.

There are also excellent facilities for many sports and the third oldest zoo in the US.

This was one of the happier looking residents. Attempts have been made to provide a semblance of natural environments, but most spaces are too small and many animals lurk against fences as far from the spectators as they can physically get. There also did not seem to be any overall theme or purpose to what was included, and comparatively poor information boards. Rabat Zoo was light years ahead in every way.

Having exhausted the interest within walking distance, next day I caught a bus to Downtown. It is probably indicative of the area I was staying in that the R Line bus which serves it has been made free from January 2022 to the end of August 2023. Elsewhere Rhode Island buses are cheap anyway as a single journey is $2, but a day pass only costs $6.

Providence expanded eventually into Rhode Island, with a current population of a little over 1 million, in an area about 37 miles wide by 48 miles long. The Ocean State is the smallest state by area, the sixth smallest by population, but the second most densely populated. It does have a very indented coastline on the south and east extending 384 miles. Providence now has a population of about 190,000, but the urban area is actually much larger as it is not really separated from the nearest towns.

About 10% of Providence is water, as the Moshassuck and Woonasquatucket rivers meet to form the Providence river which flows into Naragansett Bay. It is now largely post-industrial, and the rivers, which were covered over by industry have been rediscovered and very well redeveloped and landscaped, with a pleasant walk along their banks.

 

Providence has 7 hills and the State House tops one of them.

It is open to the public. You just arrive, go through a metal detector and are then free to wander pretty much where you will. There are a couple of audio guides you can download to a smart phone. All free.

Assembly Room

Library

Legislative Chamber

This plaque is in the entrance hall, and shows the original full name of the state as ‘Rhode Island and Providence Plantations’. The state name was only officially changed to ‘Rhode Island’ in the last few years, although ‘Plantation’ just referred to agricultural land with no slave connotations (as it has in the south of the USA).

On another hill is Brown University, one of the Ivy League of top US universities. It is named for the Brown family, who were prominent merchants and traders. Unfortunately they were also slave traders, though some of the family stopped after their first effort resulted in less than half of the slaves surviving the Atlantic voyage, so the Browns lost heavily on the voyage. The evidence suggests that they stopped because it was not profitable, not for moral reasons.

 

The area including Brown University is very upmarket. As you can see they are similar styles of houses to Elmwood (where I was staying), but everything including the pavements and roads is better maintained and more spacious.

 

 

I visited the John Brown House, a merchant’s family home which is now run as a museum by the Rhode Island Historical Society. Well worth a visit if you are interested in genuine history rather than bowdlerised versions. The staff were very knowledgeable.

Photo from Wikipedia as I forgot to take a photo!

Unfortunately John Brown was the member of the family who continued trading in slaves to the bitter end. The Rhode Island Historical Society, to its credit, is now trying to explain this to the local population.

This is Providence Town Hall at Kennedy Plaza and another war memorial – I think to the Spanish War. Kennedy Plaza is the main bus interchange, so I visited it many times. Because of the geography you have to go to Downtown Providence to get to anywhere else in Rhode Island.

Unfortunately Kennedy Plaza is the haunt of virtually every wino and homeless person in Providence. It has a nice park area, but it is not a great place, especially when dusk is falling.

I also walked along the river from the centre of Downtown to where it meets an arm of Naragansett Bay at Fox Point.

This is in Roger Williams Memorial Park on the river bank and is a Memorial to the men who died in the First World War.

These tugs are near Fox Point, which used to be a major port, but is now recovering from dereliction.

The view out to sea from Fox Point 

Noticeboard giving some history

There is still a fast ferry service from Fox Point to Newport. My visit to that playground of the ‘Golden Age’ will be covered in the next post, though I travelled by bus not ferry.

If you look inland at this point, you are confronted by a ‘spaghetti junction’ of flyovers and very busy roads, with a concrete desert underneath.

One point I have noticed so far is that vehicles are required to give exaggerated attention to pedestrians and cyclists, except where there are signal controlled crossings. If you hover anywhere near a cross walk, every vehicle stops until they are absolutely certain you are not going to cross. I imagine the penalties for injuring pedestrians and cyclists must be very severe to have persuaded virtually every driver to exercise such extreme care. It will be interesting to see if this applies everywhere or just in Rhode Island.

Next time – my adventures around Rhode Island.