Newport, Rhode Island
Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Wed 13 Jun 2012 01:44
Once we arrived, we went ashore and spent a couple of hours wandering around the town. It was a fabulous summer evening so a couple of nice cold beers in a bar overlooking the harbour and watching the boats was a 'must do'. Monday, we spent in town wandering round the shops etc. Newport is filled with old 18th and 19th century New England wooden frame style homes which are stunning. Whilst wandering we saw the signs for a baseball match in town that evening. Neither of us has ever been to a game before so we wrapped up well and set out. Although it is warm here during the day, the evenings and nights are still very chilly, and the opportunities for eating dinner on deck are very limited. The game was fun, it lasts quite a while so you do get the chance to pick up some of the rules and begin to understand what is happening. Luckily for us, there was a guy near us who helped us out with the more complicated bits!! We left slightly before the end of the game as it was getting very cold, and the score line showed the home team, Newport Gulls, heard of them??, to be well ahead of the Laconia Muskrats!!
There are great cycle trails around just about all of the island, along the Atlantic coast, so on Tuesday we set out on our bikes. We are eventually getting the chance to use our bikes regularly now as the ground here is somewhat flatter than the volcanic Caribbean islands. The whole route round was supposed to be bout 10miles according to the guy in the tourist information place, but after 15 miles we were still quite a way from home!
At about the end of the 1800's up until about the end of the first world war, Newport was famous as a seaside retreat for the rich and famous of New York, including the Vanderbilts. They built huge imposing mansions on Bellevue Avenue, also known as 'Mansion Row'. The odd thing is, the number of mansion that were built. The whole street is relatively short but there is mansion after mansion, all with extensive gardens, about a 20 acre plot each, all built in different styles. The most famous is The Breakers, the home built by the Vanderbilts from money earned building railroads all over the country. The houses are nearly all open to the public. The Breakers, although a family home, seemed very austere and formal for a summer house. The billiard room for example has marble walls, imported from the continent, and mosaic floors and ceilings. The whole house is full of intricate carvings and gold leaf work on nearly all the walls. What was suspected to be silver leaf panelling, in one room actually turned out to be platinum! One room was commissioned and built in France as a mock up, and then taken apart, transported across the Atlantic and put into place inside the house.
The cost of building these 'summer cottages' is unimaginable, especially as this was built in only 2 years from scratch as the previous house burned down, but as old Mr Vanderbilt had a fortune valued at the time of about $150-$200 million dollars, he was certainly not short of a bob or two!!
The other house we went to see was Rosecliff. This was a less formal property, which is still used today for parties and weddings, and was also used as the backdrop for the 1973 film, The Great Gatsby. The life during a summer in Newport was all party, party, party, with each hostess trying to outdo the other. It is said that a summer season at Newport, which lasted about 2 months, would have required a budget of about $7millions dollars in today's money, just to fund the parties, then there were the general running costs to attend to, and also the ladies clothes. Ladies at the time travelled to Paris a couple of time a year for couture garments, and a budget of about $1.2 million dollars (again in todays money), would just about have covered it!
Eventually, as with all good things, this 'Gilded Age' came to an end, due to income tax becoming payable and a lack of available staff, among other things and many of the houses were left standing empty, until they were bought for a pittance, or donated to the Newport Preservation Trust which now owns them.
Just so you don't think that all we do here is have fun, we have a problem this week in that we have a blockage in our holding tank! This means that all the waste that goes down the toilet gets stuck and can't get out! In order to try and resolve this we have tried many things, one of which involve John sneaking out on deck under cover of darkness to poke a garden cane down into the tank to try and unblock it!! We are still in a strict 'no discharge zone' hence the covertness of this operation! This however was unsuccessful, and we have resorted to some septic tank cleaner which we found in the supermarket to see if that will do the trick - watch this space!!!