A link to the photos follows the end of the article.
From New York City it is supposedly a 3.5 hour drive; but it took us over 5 hours because of heavy traffic at certain choke points along the way heading into a holiday weekend amid extensive road construction on I-95 in New York and Connecticut. We left about 4pm Thursday and arrived about 9:30pm. One hour was spent in a 2 mile stretch of merging traffic. The fog was dense as we approached Newport via 2-lane country roads. We used Mapquest.com to get driving instructions; it was very impressively accurate and easy to understand. Definitely one of the great inventions in the century of the automobile. Having arrived, most restaurants close their kitchens at 10, but we found the Red Parrot Pub right by Thames Street and Memorial Boulevard, which is a central point. Our late night food was topped off with a huge ice cream sundae featuring chocolate ice cream with black cherries, raspberry and butterscotch sauce, oreo cookies and cream. It somehow went down rather well.
We are in the brand-new annex of the Admiral Weaver Inn at 28 Weaver Street, within good walking distance to many of the local attractions. We parked our car in front of the inn, never to move it again till we left. There is lots of traffic within Newport; the town has 35,000 permanent residents and tons of tourists and vacationing residents packing in during the summer. The inn features comfortable clean rooms with the added bonus of being the only kosher bed and breakfast in New England. This is very special to Orthodox Jews so I will spend the rest of this paragraph providing details (www.kosherbedandbreakfast.com, telephone 401.849.0051, Mary Ellen is the innkeeper). That means they serve pancakes and omelettes for breakfast (and kosher people can eat it), and someone knows to turn lights on and off during the sabbath so that people can walk into a strange multi-level house without fearing a dark stairway. We paid $125 per night on Thursday night, and $175 per night on the weekend. The inn is full all summer long, so book in advance. The annex was just built and we were the first ones to stay in the new rooms; they weren’t decorated yet and it was pretty much Home Depot decor for now, and until they put in proper window treatments, rooms facing West are much better for those who wake up to sunlight. The ones in the main house were decorated in Victorian style; room 6 on the third floor was our favorite of them. It is roughly a 3 star property. People on the ground floor found it noisy, so we recommend the second or third floors in the main house. There were a variety of people there, but at this time all of them were religious Jews of various stripes and it was pleasant for the sabbath to have all the people eating their meals in the breakfast room. You can purchase meals from the local caterer for $25 a meal (but they weren’t very good, although this is a brand new service and they may still be figuring things out) or bring your own food, which is what we did; all rooms come with refrigerators. Someone brought their own chulent (beef stew) pot and made their own food in the inn’s kitchen. Some families take over the inn for a weekend and make nice family reunions there. The inn is a 20 minute walk from the Touro Synagogue, which is Orthodox. This is a very good place for a religious couple to spend the weekend, and we are told that an Eruv is to become operational within the month (of special interest to Orthodox Jews so that they can carry things in the street and walk with baby carriages during the sabbath).
Newport on the whole is a nice place for couples to take a short holiday. It is very much a walking town with good food options.
On Friday, we started a 20 minute walk at about 10:30 to the Breakers Mansion. Buy a $31 pass to all 5 mansions that one should see. The pass is good for multi-day use and you cannot do this all in one day. On Friday, we went to the Breakers, rambled along the Cliff Walk behind the mansion to another mansion called RoseCliff, and then a bit further to the Marble House, and then took the trolley from the front of the mansion for the 10 minute ride back to the center of town by about 3:30. All of the mansions are within 20 minutes walk of each other but because 3 of the 5 have guided tours, you will spend over an hour at each of those properties and you will walk a lot on the properties. Eat your Wheaties before starting and take a bottle of water because there is no food service on any of these properties and the neighborhood is strictly residential. Car parks are available, but the streets are clogged and it is best to walk around. It is also very pretty with lots of beautiful trees, homes and backyards to sit in. The cliff walk that runs from the Breakers toward RoseCliff is about 1/4 mile but it is very rugged over rocks and one should definitely exit after that quarter mile walk because the next exit is not for another mile or so. The cliff walk from the Breakers the other way back toward Memorial Boulevard via the 40 Steps (roughly a mile) is much easier and we did that later in the visit. All 5 mansions are distinct and they are all impressive in their own way; the one mansion we felt was not as good as the others was the Elm House, but it has a very pretty back yard with these huge elephant-like trees that you should step under to fully appreciate. The Marble House is very extravagant and the Breakers is very large. They are all very nicely decorated and the RoseCliff has quite a bit of charm. 3 of the 5 homes have guided tours, usually about 45 minutes in length; 2 of them are self-guided with audio players or you can go without. All houses have shops in them selling more or less the same merchandise; you can also find these shops in the major hotels and in the center city area; don’t buy books at the first house you see because then you have to walk around with your shopping all day. One thing we didn’t see is Astor House, a mansion with costumed people giving a sense of historical flavor. We are told it is very interesting, but we had quite enough with these 5 mansions on this trip to keep us busy.
Friday late lunch at Le Bistro at Bowen’s Wharf, right along the harbour-front. This was a real lucky find and if the place is full during mealtimes, consider eating here at an off hour; we liked the lunch menu more than the dinner menu and the items were more interesting than usual. On the second floor there are pretty tables facing the window overlooking the public areas and the harbour with the ships at sea. I had a hot grilled salmon sandwich on rye bread with a mocha layer cake; all excellent and very reasonably priced. When we were there, the staff of the hotel across the street came outside to sing American songs at 4pm on the Fourth of July. It was a local happening. We took a 5pm one hour harbour cruise with the Spirit of Newport, a covered boat. We had enough sun by then and didn’t want to go out on a sailboat or one of the other smaller craft that were going out that hour. That night were fireworks by the harbour; no big deal but again a local happening and most of the people at the inn took the 10 minute walk over to see it. Best viewing site we scouted is to enter the alleyway and parking lot next to Percy’s restaurant across Thames from the Red Parrot (Thames & Memorial Blvd) and keep walking toward the edge of the docks as far as you can go.
Saturday morning we walked to Touro Synagogue, said to be the oldest in America. It is not air conditioned, but this usually doesn’t matter (though it did the day we were there). Legend has it that George Washington visited there, but there is no proof of this. He did send a letter about religious tolerance to the synagogue which is prominently posted on its wall. Services there are living history; the reading of the prophets that morning must have begun in 1786. After the services there is a little food and a chance to meet other people, not all of whom are tourists. The nearby Hotel Viking is a high-quality traditional hotel, and the synagogue itself is close to the center of the city. After lunch at 2pm we continued with Elm House mansion and then Chateau-Sur-Mer. This last place was actually one of the best, because it really was decorated in an interesting way. Now it is about 5pm and we went back on the Cliff Walk by the Breakers heading toward the 40 steps and Memorial Boulevard, which is the closest main street to our inn. It is an hour’s walk taken casually, and we sat around the 40 steps area along the cliffs and the sea and ambled back close to 7. Dinner at Puerini’s Restaurant, 24 Memorial Boulevard, a few blocks from the hotel. Very home-style southern Italian cooking; they don’t take reservations, there is no air conditioning and you might have to wait for a table, but it is very good. That evening after dinner we were rather tired and didn’t last through more than 10 minutes of the video we borrowed from the inn’s library.
Sunday morning an early morning walk around center city to the Washington Square and historical district area, nothing to speak of, but it was a nice walk rounding out along the harbour-front. We were very lucky that Friday and even Saturday the temperatures and humidity were most pleasant, but our luck ran out about 10:30am Sunday with very hot and sticky weather which forced us to the showers just before leaving the inn an hour later and reaching the city’s exit by noon. It took about 4½ hours to return to New York. Avis rental car “discovered” some car damage upon our return; we have no idea how it might have happened since we drove straight to the inn and then straight home and never left the car unattended anywhere except on a public street right in front of the inn, but I took insurance and I expect that will be the end of the matter. If it isn’t, this space will be updated with an alert. In any event, I always advise people renting cars to take insurance and to only waive the Collision portion if their credit card picks up that insurance and one should check with their credit card companies before renting cars (ie: Citibank Visa does; American Express doesn’t). The cost of the 2 day rental from Avis with a 20% travel agent’s discount was $305, including taxes and insurance.
