In January, my boyfriend and I took a weekend trip to Newport, Rhode Island. Also known as the "City by the Sea," the "Sailing Capital of the World," and "America's Society Capital," the small city sits right on the southern coast of Aquidneck Island in Rhode Island. I hear that the city is mobbed all summer by vacationers, so I really enjoyed our jaunt during the winter off-season.
Known for its famous mansions along the water, we first took a tour of Cornelius Vanderbilt's 70-room, 65,000 square foot summer home called "The Breakers." After the tour, we strolled along the gorgeous Cliff Walk, a public walkway bordering the shoreline of the city. Throughout the afternoon, we hosted our own pub crawl and ended up at the oldest tavern in America for dinner, the White Horse Tavern, which opened in 1673.
The next day we visited several other notable historic sites. We took a tour of the oldest synagogue in America, Touro Synagogue, which in 1946 was designated a national historic site. We then took a walk to see one of the oldest baseball fields in the United States, Cardines Field. A local historical debate continues as to whether baseball was played on the field prior to 1900, or if baseball wasn't played there until 1908 -- which is the earliest documentation of the stadium's construction. As we continued our walk, we stumbled across the oldest house of worship in Rhode Island, the Quaker Meetinghouse, established in 1699.
By that time, we thought that we had seen all of the significant historical sites that Newport had to offer. That was until I realized we were walking by the oldest lending library in America, the Redwood Library and Athenaeum!!
Before we left Newport to head back to Boston, we played a round of Geo-caching and found a micro-cache hidden behind the town movie theater, we stumbled across the grave of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and we picked up some truffle oil for Aaron at a local gourmet food store. On our way back to Boston, I navigated us through New Bedford, Massachusetts so that we could make an important pit stop -- Frederick Douglass' first home as a free man.
All this being said, we had a wonderful weekend in Newport! This is just one example of the many adventures we have been on so far and with many new patches to prove it!
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