Newport, RI

Years ago, my cousin Colleen lived in RI for awhile. I visited her once, and she took me to Newport for a quick tour. She showed me a little bit of the Cliff Walk, and we saw some of the famous mansions along it. My memory being what it is though, all I could really recall, so many years later, is being impressed! So, since I could hardly remember it, and Bill had never been there, I wanted us to do a day trip out there. So we did. It was a perfect day, and other than our feet being a bit tired at the end of it, we had a great time!

It was a beautiful day...

And you can see, as we begin our walk, that the path looks down on a lovely shoreline...

Probably THE most famous of the Cliff Walk/Newport extravaganzas - one of the Vanderbilt's summer homes. The stats: built between 1893-95 for $12 million, has 70 rooms and 65,000 sq. ft.

We were so amazed, we had to leave the Cliff Walk to walk around the block and thus walk around the Breakers property. Here's the official entrance - i.e., where you buy the tickets to view the place! See the size of those gates? The same fencing went all the way around!

Another neat section along the walk...

And I couldn't tell if they were warning potential trespassers that they'd be attacked by a killer dog if they came over the fence, or...if they were just telling DOG passersby that if they jumped on the fence, they were bad dogs...?!

Here you can see the path (left) going between the homes and the beach. Not too bad, eh? Think you could be OK living in this kind of setting??

I peeped through the wall of this mansion and stole a photo of this couple, making good use of the perfect day...

We're nearing our turn-around point (the walk continued, but we didn't! Too tired!), and you can see Bill nearing an oriental-style building. This is a Chinese tea house that was a later add-on to the Marble House, another Vanderbilt mansion.

We couldn't see the Marble House from the path, but the tea house looked neat!

Before we turned around, we went through the tunnel that goes by the tea pagoda.

I just couldn't get over this scenic coastline with the fancy homes!

It's pretty, don't ya think?

You could combine your walk experience with a trolley ride (which our feet were hoping for towards the end, but they were forced to march on...).

There's that nice beach again! Only looking even more inviting at the end of our walk!!!

I loved their lifeguard "towers."

Driving around scenic Newport...