Newport is a lovely little town, especially in October when the masses of tourists have left for the time being, promising to return in the spring. The smaller mansions were all closed for the winter. I think many of the “cottages” were built without effective heating systems because after all they were only occupied during a few weeks in the summer. Also the tram service is cut back quite a bit at the end of September. We got a taste of what it must be like in the summer when we went to the Tourist Information Center to book a trolley tour of the town and everything was booked solid for that day because a huge cruise ship had anchored in the harbor. We booked for the next morning and had the entire trolley almost to ourselves.
When the weather was nice it was really, really nice.
Still the effects of the summer were to be felt even in the Fall. I have never seen so many t-shirt / sweatshirt shops in one town before and every t-shirt, every sweatshirt had Newport emblazoned across it. Nothing more, nothing less, just different colors. I guess that’s what everyone wants who goes there, maybe a little of the prestige of the Vanderbuilts for the price of a t-shirt. So Newport is not a shopping El Dorado, which is just as well since Frank and I just had one suitcase. Four of us had to travel from Boston to Newport in a car with our luggage and I was afraid not everything would fit if we each took a suitcase. A good thing too, because we just managed to squeeze everything in. 
Daddy and Lanie arrived from Savannah on Sunday morning and Jenny and I drove to the Providence Airport to pick them up. It was good to be together again. It was almost a year to the day since the four of us had enjoyed Tallahassee and a little over two years since the six of us had stayed together near Roanoke, Virginia. Daddy has lost some weight and is looking great.
Aren't they purrrty?!?
This was our sixth house exchange since we began in October 2001 and we have always had such wonderful luck with our exchange partners and their homes. Kathy and Bruce came to Germany the day before we flew to Boston so we had a chance to get to know them in person. After corresponding with someone for several months you really get a good impression of what the person is like, so it was no surprise that we enjoyed our time together with them, short as it was. We also met again at the Boston airport for a good hour just before our flight left and it was fun to exchange stories of our experiences in each others’ homes.
It's really hard to take a good picture of their house because the trees and hedges are in the way.
We were very conveniently located as it was close to the Cliff Walk and a pleasant walk away from the center of Newport. The local grocery store was only about two blocks down the main road, so if we only needed a few things we could walk there too.
This was the way we took from town back to the house.
Eating in, eating out
One of the fun things to do while on vacation is to eat. For the first week we took turns cooking and had a lot of delicious meals, although I had a very hard time finding dried lentils for my famous lentil soup. In the end they finally got some in at the local health food store. Don’t Americans eat lentils? We had lunch a couple of times at Panera Bread, a bakery / café that we liked. They had very good sandwiches and a wonderful broccoli cheese soup. It was worth going there just for that. We also had lunch once at Mudville’s Pub and we were all very satisfied with the food.
Ummm, what shall we have?
However, by the end of the week we were ready for something special, especially since our experiment in Chinese take-out was borderline disastrous. Jenny is a big fan of lobster so she couldn’t leave New England without trying the local fare. We did some research and took Kathy and Bruce’s advice and made reservations at The Mooring . Jenny was pleased with her meal and we had some mixed feelings about ours. (The rest of us all ordered the same thing, a fish dish that sounded like it would be very good but wasn’t anything special.) However, my clam chowder was very good, the deserts were yummy and they served very good California wine. We had a bottle of white and one of red and they were both excellent. Unfortunately I didn’t take a picture of Jenny’s lobster, but Jenny took one of the rest of us.
Too bad you can't read the label on the wine bottle. It was good though.
By far our favorite place to eat, however, was Brick Alley Pub. It came very highly recommended by Kathy and Bruce and we were sorry we didn’t check it out until the second week of our stay, since we only managed to eat there twice. The first time we went for lunch and had the most amazing waitress, a tall, slender, nice-looking blonde. First, she took our order – remember there were six of us – without writing down a thing. I was skeptical since some waitresses, and waiters too of course, don’t get everything right even after taking copious notes. Well, then she returned after a while carrying our order, all of it – on one huge tray. Wow, I thought, but it got better. She balanced the tray on one hand while opening up a little folding table to place the tray on and then proceeded to give everyone exactly what was ordered without a single question. Now I know WONDER WOMAN’S secret identity!
I stole this from their website. I don't think they will mind. The soup and salad bar was included.
The food was very good and it was a fun place to be. They had all sorts of interesting things hanging from the ceiling and on the walls. (I really do need a camera with a better flash.) And the deserts were amazing. Lanie ordered some sort of chocolate thingy (I’ve forgotten what it was called) that wasn’t any more expensive than any of the other deserts, but when it came our eyes nearly popped out!
She's already eaten about half of this!
Lanie did the best she could. Ulf did the best he could.
Of course, Ulf had already shared a strawberry cheese cake with Jenny.
He really had to work at this second desert.
We all did the best we could, but we still didn’t manage to finish it!
Wild Life Adventures
Kathy and Bruce have a cat, Ginger, who graciously allowed us to care for her while we were living in her house. She’s not actually a house cat, although she did come in regularly for some petting by Daddy or Frank. Normally the garage is where she hangs out, so Daddy insisted on leaving the garage door open for her so she could go in and out freely. I noticed the food was disappearing pretty fast, but what do I know about how big an appetite a cat has? One evening Daddy came into the kitchen and said there was an animal in the garage and it wasn’t Ginger. I assumed it was another cat and went out there with him – you can enter the garage from the kitchen, there’s a very practical little mudroom in between. Anyway, I went with him to have a look, but when we got there he mentioned that it definitely wasn’t a cat because it had a long pointed snout. The first thing I thought of was a fox, but then he said it was black and white and he assumed it was a SKUNK! Well, complete coward that I am, I hightailed it out of there back to the safety of the house and Lanie the Indomitable and Daddy the Fearless had to shoo the skunk out of the garage. Not me, I’m not stupid.
A few nights later Jenny and Ulf came home from the pub where they had watched a Red Sox game and it was quite late. When they got close to the front door they noticed an animal, a black and white animal. Ulf was all for investigating and Jenny threatened instantaneous divorce and banishment from the house if he got sprayed. Undaunted, (or maybe just stupid – Sorry, Ulf) he tried to take some pictures of the beast. They didn’t turn out very well because of course it’s difficult to shoot a black animal at night, but the eyes are impressive.
Actually, Lanie thought it might have been a pet skunk that had had the stink glands removed because there was no smell at all, but where’s the adventure in that?
