Regardless, we had a great weekend and we wanted to share it with everyone.
Last week I was in Portland for three days, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I took a red-eye back to NYC over Friday night, and got back to JFK Saturday morning at 8am. I got back to Hoboken and our place around 10:00. We decided that since we had the whole weekend ahead of us, and some catching up to do, we would cruise up to Rhode Island for a night and two days. So we left two hours after I got back, loaded up the car with jackets and a suitcase, and hit the road!
Here's the George Washington Bridge on our way up. The GWB crosses the Hudson river from Jersey to Manhattan. It's a massive suspension bridge with two levels.
We bombed down Highway 95 which rolls through the lower portion of New York, into Connecticut through Stamford, Greenwich, New Haven and Mystic, then into Rhode Island (our destination). Here's the route we took:
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Once we got to Rhode Island, we took a detour to hit the Atlantic Ocean for the first time:
It's true that the Atlantic doesn't have NEAR the wave size that the Pacific has. It's much more mellow, which was strange to me because I always associate the ocean with the "sound" of waves crashing, but that wasn't the case out here. It's a "quieter" ocean experience.
On the way to Rhode Island, I had a meeting canceled for Monday, so we decided to extend our trip out a day and stay three days, two nights. This was going to be fun!
We made it to Rhode Island, but it was nearly dark when we got there. After trying an Inn down by the water and them having no vacancy, the guy at the front desk was super helpful in that he directed us to:
1. A town north of NewPort (about five minutes away) called MiddleTown, which had a bunch of hotels we would likely find a room in
2. The worst chinese food I have ever had in my life
I nearly think that the worst chinese food of my life was worth the hotel room, because the hotel we settled on was cheap enough that we decided to get ambitious and try and find an Inn in Newport for the next night.
Our first day in Newport we hit the Cliff Walk. The Cliff Walk runs along the south ridge of an inlet to the north of Newport. It was a gorgeous view not only of the water, but inland were the famous "Newport Mansions". So we had a great time on the 1.5 mile walk:
Kristal gets fancy with our Camera. This reminds me of the photo's Betsy takes:
After our walk, we continued to drive on to our next goal -- Martha's Vineyard. Kristal has always wanted to visit Martha's Vineyard, so we continued driving down highway 1 until we got to the closest ferry point New Bedford, about 30 minutes from Newport. We puttered around New Bedford for about ten minutes looking for the ferry, and when we found it, we pulled up and asked for a ticket. "Ferry doesn't run on the weekends," the ticket-booth-guy said. "Only during the week this time of year." Bummer! He continued: "You can drive down to Woods Hole, it runs. But by the time you get there, be pretty late."
We decided to make Martha's Vineyard another trip. The last thing we wanted to do was spend our Sunday driving all over the place and taking boats when we should be out and about walking around. Not to mention the sun had come out, it was about 55 degrees, and quite warm. I know, I know -- it may not seem warm, especially to those in the Golden State, but really, it's quite pleasant.
So we cruised back to Newport and took in the place. It was actually very, very cool. We took in lunch (late lunch) at a cool Irish Pub named Buskers. We then hit all the shops that are along the waterfront. We then hopped in the car to find our hotel for Sunday night. As we were driving around aimlessly, Kristal spotted a really cool historic hotel called Hotel Viking. It was amazing! We stopped, I cruised in to see about availability, and was able to secure room. This place was exactly what we were hoping for our last night out:
After we checked in, dropped all our stuff out, we then walked down to the waterfront. By the time we made it down there it was dusk, and getting extremely chilly:
We continued driving around the town that evening looking at random sights -- The oldest tavern in the US, the White Horse Tavern, various houses build pre-1650, etc. It was extremely cool.
We went back to Hotel Viking that night, ordered some food and a bottle of wine in the room, and watched three hours of Ax Men on History channel.
The next morning,
we got around, and hit the beach one more time:
then started our drive back. We stopped in a gorgeous little town called Mystic, in Connecticut. This quaint little town is your picturesque little New England town and unfortunately we snapped zero good pictures of it. But we talked to a couple of shop-owners, and will definitely be returning this summer. It's a very cool little town.
We had lunch in a great seafood place. Kristal had a really great lobster salad role:
And despite my generally nervous-looking expression, was really anxious to dig into my lobster taco's:
Before leaving, we tried to take one snapshot of the view we had from this great place of the Mystic drawbridge and shops on Main Street:
After that we drove in pouring down rain nearly the entire way home (home sweet home!) and made it back tonight in time to take a load off and do a blog post.
Again, apologize for the lack of blogs. We have been staying entirely too busy, and please, continue checking back as we come into Spring because I'm sure Kristal will make me blog more regularly.
Bye!!
