by Bob Sparrow
Marble House interior
Newport, RI – Our first port of call is Newport, and I have to say, I really didn’t know what to expect; I knew about Newport Beach, but not much about Newport, Rhode Island. To fully understand the part of Newport we will be visiting, it helps to have an understanding of ‘The Gilded Age’ (roughly 1870s-1890s) when it was fashionable for high society of New York to get out of the hot city and show off their wealth by building an ostentatious ‘second home’ in Newport, these second homes were called ‘cottages’ because their homes in New York took up a full city block!! So, we opted for the ‘Newport Mansions Tour’ – it was fantastic!!! We first visited the ‘Marble House’, built by William and Alva Vanderbilt in 1892. It was called the Marble House because it contained 500,000 cubic feet of marble. It had 50 rooms in the 125,000 square feet of the home and cost $11 million to build – that’s about $350 million in today’s dollars! Its four acres sit right on the Newport coast and was used only about four to six weeks during the entire year! Our tour took us through the entire house and grounds – we thought we had seen spectacular homes on the ‘left coast’ Newport, by comparison, those ARE cottages! But, after visiting the Marble House, apparently I hadn’t seen anything yet!
The Breakers
Our next stop was ‘The Breakers’, so called because it sat right on the coast where the waves were constantly breaking. It was just a short drive up the coast from the Marble House. This home was built by William’s brother, Cornelius Vanderbilt, partly in an effort to ‘out do’ his brother’s place, which it does! The Breakers has 136,000 gross square feet, where the five-story, 70-room house sits on 14 acres right on the cliffs overlooking Easton Bay. The dining room alone is 2,400 square feet! It was the largest, most opulent house in the Newport area upon its completion in 1895. Truely mind-boggling to tour!
On the way back to the ship, our bus took us through the quaint little downtown of Newport and our guide relateed lots of interesting stories about life amongst the rich and . . .richer. This was, and still is, an incredible place.
Margaritaville in Fanieul Hall closed!!! RIP Jimmy!
Boston – Our next port was the fabulous city of Boston, where we got off the ship and onto a Hop-On-Hop-Off bus, where our bus driver could have just come off the set of Saturday Night Live – she was hilarious! Our plan was to hit a few spots on the bus route, get off and walk part of the Freedom Trail, hop back on and see what else interested us. We stayed on the bus longer than usual so we could hear more of the bus driver’s routine. Apparently, everyone else had the same idea, after we made 8-10 stops and nobody got off the bus, the bus driver comes on the P.A. system and says, “Maybe you guys don’t understand the concept here, this is a hop on hop off bus, but nobody is hopping off!!!”. Aside from the bus driver’s routine, the highlights along the way included, the USS Constitution (Old Ironsides), Cheers, the famous TV show’s bar, Chinatown and lots of other attractions humorously described by our bus driver. We got off at Boston Common and walked a bit of the Freedom Trail, discovered the Bean Town Pub, where we had to try the clam chowder (DELICIOUS!) and a Sam Adams beer (also pretty good!), then continued down to Faneuil Hall – a great indoor-outdoor marketplace. We got back on the next bus and found that our new bus driver had a better sense of humor than our first one. Where do they get these guys?!! A very fun and funny journey through Bean Town. Once back on the ship we talked to various shipmates about what they did in the city and realized we missed two interesting sites: 1) Fenway Park, home to baseball’s Boston Red Sox; it is the oldest ballpark in all of major league baseball, built in 1912. Tours of this venerable ballpark take you into the old locker rooms, rooftop seating and up-close views of the ‘Green Monster’ (the left field wall). 2) The other tour we missed, but should have done, was a reenactment of the Boston Tea party where visitors got to witness a fully-dressed reenactment of the tea party and even got to throw a box of tea overboard. At dinner back on the boat we shared a table with two couples from England who had attended the Tea Party reinactment and said they enjoyed it, but of course, were looking at it from an entirely different perspective than we Americans do. Interesting!!
Lobster Update: Too busy to have lobster for lunch, and our dinner is back on the boat, but we’ve still got three more ‘Lobster Stops’ ahead of us. Besides, isn’t Maine the state really known for Maine lobster?
Next post, Monday: The Emerald Princess & Bar Harbor, Maine
