Newport

Newport, RI is such a unique place to visit. It has the beach, a quaint down town with homemade fudge and ice cream, the National Tennis Hall of Fame, cliff walk hiking, and mansions. Great for the boys, great for the parents. We've been here many times, both before kids and now with. I'm pretty sure this will be an annual beach trip for our family. It's close enough to make it a long weekend trip instead of sucking up an entire week of vaca (plus, after 2 days at the beach with kids it can no longer be considered vacation, so we figure we may as well head home after that and have several of those trips throughout the year!). 

Also, side note, as many fun memories as we have had here, one distinct and not so fun memory is when we visited here the summer after Gabriel was born. We got stuck in really bad traffic on the way off the island and Gabriel would only sleep in the car if it was MOVING. So yea, listening to a 3 month old scream for over an hour was not fun. Much better this time, G :) 

First off, the boys and I drove ahead of Andy so we could enjoy some time at the hotel pool (really we could just got to any hotel anywhere that has a pool and that is vacation to the boys). Andy was able to come up on a bus after work (thank you Peter Pan bus lines). On our way up, the boys and I stopped in to see some friends who were spending the summer in CT ... hi!

For our first excursion, we headed tot he Cliff Walk, which wraps around the perimeter of the island that Newport is on. There is a set of stairs that literally walk down to the ocean. When the tide comes in the water cover the stairs at the bottom...

Climbing around the rocks near the bottom of the stairs.

Time to head back up. The boys counted the stairs. I think it is near 100...

Walking along the Cliff Walk

Boom, our first mansion (of many)

I am not posting any more pics of mansions (you're welcome) but there are a lot.

We managed to distract the boys well enough that they walked all the way to the beach from the start of the Cliff walk. I don't remember exactly how far it was, but it was pretty far. Like at least a mile. You can't tell it from their faces:

We spent the rest of the day at the beach (Cliff Walk was around 9am, and at the beach by 11am, so long day!). This particular beach has a boardwalk with food, an aquarium, showers, carousel, music, etc. So we played, and played all day. It even looked like it was going to thunderstorm at one point, but we held out an it passed. We had to drag the boys off the beach. They had so much fun ion the waves, Judah especially was pushing his limits and wanting to go out pretty far. There were many holes dug and sandcastles built, a full day that was punctuated with a carousel ride, and (bonus!) we didn't get charged for parking for some reason. Time to head back to the hotel, after a stop for some ice cream of course!

Back at the hotel, it was time to hit the pool again before dinner. Seriously, these kids could swim for days if we let them. I was worn out. We ordered pizza and called it a night. The next day, we ventured out again for some more Newport fun...

National Tennis Hall of Fame...

Wish I knew what they had been talking about!

After a not so short detour to find a bathroom (after three attempts at a local shop, a library and a museum, we gave up and used the bushes), we headed to this hole-in-the-wall chili dog place we had never tried before. It was pretty good, and cheap, and eclectic...

We strolled down to the main part of town, bought some fudge and ate it by the harbor (I don't recall why I do not have any pics of this). See you again next year, Newport!