Ro here!
I am not going to lie, writing this is giving me a serious case of vacation withdrawals and I’m finding myself living vicariously through the photographs I am in the process of editing. This vacation was such a blessing and a much-needed opportunity for us to really, really rest. We are so thankful and looking forward to sharing some of our travels with you.
Although we plan on sharing individual posts focused on some of the places we visited and the dishes we tried, we did quite a bit of things that we thought would be fun to include in a post sharing what we did each today.
In these posts, you’ll be able to get an idea of what we did each day and essentially, how we spent our time and money on the Classic Coast. For more detailed posts about what we did, stay tuned!
Day One
Our first full day in Newport, Rhode Island we wanted to spend the day starting to check off some of the things on our to-see list. One of the things on my list was seeing the Newport mansions since they’re historical, grandiose and also a peek back into life during the Gilded Age for the rich.
Before getting our day started, we had breakfast at our hotel, which was really nice. They provided small plates of food that you can get as much as you want as often as you want. It’s made in house with some very creative and delicious combinations. For example, they had a soft-boiled egg with lox and a skewer with cantaloupe, prosciutto and mozzarella cheese that was surprisingly delicious. You can read more about our experience at The Attwater Hotel, here.
After breakfast, we headed to the wharf to get coffee at the Coffee Grinder, which was an experience I will always remember. Aside from the fact that the coffee was really delicious, the baristas were so kind and funny, and the view was a nice one as well. After you get your coffee, you can enjoy your freshly brewed cup on the wharf in one of their seats facing the many yachts and boats docked there.
Once we enjoyed the view for a bit and making guesses about the costs of the yachts, we headed to our first to-see item, which was the Rough Point mansion.
Rough Point was a mansion once owned by philanthropist, heiress, and fashionista, Doris Duke. Before entering the mansion, I had little knowledge of who owned it or their background. I just knew I loved how stunning it looked online and wanted the opportunity to see and learn more about its history in person. It was once we got there and did the tour that we found out about the owner, including Doris’ father, who started Duke University.
I will be sharing some more information about our experience there in a later post, but it was probably one of my favorite activities we did whilst there.
After that we headed to Winner Winner to try the chicken, we’ve been told is one you definitely do not want to miss out on.
After lunch, we decided to head along Ocean Drive to see some beautiful shots of the Atlantic Ocean and Narragansett Bay. We had the opportunity to drive through Newport on our way back from Cape Code a couple of years back, so seeing it again, but when it was brighter and less rainy was really a sight to behold.
It was also apparently a Kite festival happening around the same time, which was pretty entertaining seeing a giant octopus floating around in the sky.
After our ride on Ocean Drive, we decided to walk Cliff Walk, which is also a sight to behold. It’s unlike anything I’ve seen before and has some of the prettiest views I’ve seen of Narragansett Bay and even in the Ocean if you’re walking near Rough Point.
There are some sections that are rockier than others, so being that we did not have on the right shoes, we kept our walk this day pretty short and stayed on the paved path, stopping to enjoy the view for a moment.
For dinner, we went to Diegos on the Wharf. The food and the service were great, but it was so hot on the second floor where we dined that we were pretty fatigued. That’s not the fault of the restaurant, however, but it definitely made the walk back to the hotel after dinner one that we were dreading after baking on the second floor. It was a great meal, but difficult to really enjoy it since we were rushing through our meal so we can get back to a cooler surrounding. I’m assuming that was just a rare case, however, because it was really hot that day in Newport, so it is something they probably could not control.
Once we finally made it back to our hotel, we decided to spend the rest of the evening in as we were full, hot and splendidly tired from our day out. It was a good kind of tired, though and after day one, we were already looking forward to what the second day would bring us.
