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Published: October 11th 2022
Today we were headed for Newport, Rhode Island and we headed off east along Highway 20 connecting with Highway 146 down to the State Capital of Providence, and down Interstate i195 to Newport.
We went via some backroads through small towns and started to see some nice foliage colours and the overall travel time was around 2.5 hours today. I tried hard to find a diner on our way but had no luck so we kept on driving and driving and we eventually got so far we decided to keep on going all the way. As we entered Rhode Island it ticked off our 47th state visited and state # 7 on this trip (only 3 more to go !)
The weather was mostly fine but still quite cold around 14 degrees but eventually turned to showers and was quite windy as we approached Newport which is on the coast as we were hit with the remnants of Hurricane Ian which had come up the east coast after smashing into Florida.
When we started planning this part of the trip we were initially going to stay in Providence the capital city but after doing more research we settled
on Newport and we will be here for the next 2 days. The city is only small with population around 25,000- but has a reputation as the sailing capital of the world which is where I had heard of this as the place where we won the America’s Cup Yacht Race back in 1983. I remember waking up early on a Monday morning and listening to our Prime Minister at the time Bob Hawke famously saying “any boss who sacks anyone for not turning up to work today is a bum”.
The city was founded in 1639 and became the 13th state of the USA in 1790. I also found out the American flag has 13 stripes one for all of the initial 13 colonies that became the founding states (Rhode Island being the last of these). It is actually the smallest state in the USA but interestingly until 2020 it had the longest state name being “The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations", which is 52 letters including spaces, or 45 without. But they decided in 2020 following a referendum to drop the words “and Providence Plantations” and hence Rhode Island gave up the record due to
the perception of the word “plantation” being linked to slavery and a big push for change following the death of George Floyd. My knowledge of Rhode Island was limited to the America’s Cup and Tennis (more about that tomorrow).
We arrived at our Hotel called the Newport Bay Club & Hotel early in the afternoon and we had a drama checking in as my Credit Card was not being accepted. This was the Qantas Cash Card (Mastercard where I preloaded US currency). So I had to use the ATM to withdraw cash to pay the bill which was a bit of a pain. We soon had our room keys and headed upstairs. We chose this Hotel in our original 2020 planned itinerary in part due to the images on their website showing a balcony with 2 glasses of red wine on a table overlooking the harbour, with reasonable rates which included free dinner vouchers but my 2022 deal was not quite as good. We did however have a very large room that had separate living room and kitchen area of lots of space.
The building itself is very old and used to be a cotton mill and was
Our impersonation of the Hotel’s promotional image
Note the bottle is half empty and decorated with the chain I received from the Big E parade last night ! It was good.built in 1835. One of the unusual characteristics was that the floors were not level and sank from window to the centre of the room and you felt like you were walking downhill (very weird), but not unsafe as the exposed beams you could see on the high ceilings were as thick a piece of timber as you can imagine.
We ventured outside in the cold to explore some of the shops and found a supermarket and liquor store to buy some cheese and crackers, some fresh orange juice, bananas and a large 1.5 litre bottle of Rose. It was a Saturday night and we decided to have dinner downstairs at the Surf Club but they had no tables available so we decided to grab a Pepperoni Pizza to go and ate this in the room.
We had been planning on doing a trolley tour here but decided not to book in advance and this turned out to be a big mistake as now nothing is available. I sent an email off to get on a wait list for any cancellations and got lucky as a Princess cruise ship was due to dock tomorrow in Newport but due
to the rough seas they have abandoned the port and some booking opportunities have now opened up for us.
Early to bed and alarm set for just after 4.00am as I realised our TV does in fact have Fox Sports 1 live coverage of the NRL Grand Final between the mighty Penrith Panthers looking for back to back titles.
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