Playground for the Rich and Famous
With a day to spare, we thought we would make a flying visit to Newport Rhode Island. We headed off nice and early, well early for us and arrived in Newport to a beautiful sunny day.
Finding a car park was not the usual easy thing for TOH, and driving through some of the streets that are still the original cobbles and made wide enough for horse drawn carriages and not a V8 pickup, we were pleased to find a car park in the new part of the port, only a short walk back to the town centre. This is the Port of The Americas Cup (or was!).
As with a lot of places along this coast Newport began as a trading Port, but it also became the first site for Religious Tolerance. As such many religions flourished here unlike other areas nearby. That were controlled by the Puritans.
In the mid 1800’s many wealthy from the South to escape the heat for the summer and so built summer cottages here. Well at least that is what history called these Mansions on Bellevue Ave.
Much to the delight of TOH we found a Pepper Palace Shop, so with great delight he had me tasting various chilli sauces, enough to say my nose was still running a good 10 minutes after leaving the shop.
For some reason, a lot of the old building (and cobbled roads) have survived in Newport, and we found the “Oldest Tavern in the USA” (The White Horse Tavern). So naturally we had to have a wee bevvy there. It is now predominately a restaurant, and as the bar was very small, we took our drinks out to the sun in the garden.
It was a brief visit here, to mingle with the rich and famous as on Saturday we will spent the day getting prepared for the next chapter of this adventure.