Newport Rhode Island - Tall Ships and lots of Money

Dateline: Newport RI in Newport Harbor
October 27, 2007 1730 hours

Okay, forget what I wrote the other day about the richies living in Bar Harbor, Maine. The REAL rich folks live here. Today was another “tender” day getting into the docks in town and I thought we were on some sultan’s navy base. I have never seen so many 50 – 100 foot motor yachts and ocean sail boats in my life. Some of the people must live on them.

It is a foggy and rainy day here, so not a lot of time spent touring in town. Tomorrow in New York we are going to spend the entire day working on the computer, photos, laundry and other things like that, as the ship docks in Brooklyn at the new cruise ship terminal. Unfortunately, Brooklyn is still Brooklyn, and since we will end out first phase of the vacation in New York, we thought it would be a good opportunity to get caught up on other stuff.

We went to dinner with friends last night for the second formal night on the ship, and we decided to hit the hoity toity Italian restaurant, which was very nice, and then went to the piano bar and listened to this Aussie musician who has become a ship-board favorite. He does Elton John just like Elton John, as well as a lot of other artists, and is a pretty funny guy to top it off.

We went into the town of Newport this morning and just sort of walked around a bit, and (of course) smuggled a few more bottles of wine back onto the boat. There are some really wonderful examples of colonial homes and building here, one of the oldest Baptist (Trinity Church) churches in the U.S., as well as the first Synagogue in America. Check out the photos at our Picasa Google Photo album. Dad, check out the pipe organs in the churches we’ve taken this week. How would you like to play one of those babies? Check out the photos of George Washington’s private pew (well, shared later with Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles during our lifetime) and some of the buildings from the middle and latter 1600’s. Coming from California the sense of history here on the East Coast is something for us to really get into. Of course, Newport is one of the few cities in which the Brits and French didn’t piss on one another’s boots, but was founded as an “open” religious city, so there was quite the mix of Protestants, Jews and Quakers even. Pirates ruled the roost for some year and were then thrown out.

The city’s wealth came at the cost of slavery, as it was a major component of the Triangle trade, in which goods and Rum were shipped to Europe and Africa, and slaves were imprisoned and brought back to the Colonies.

We also went to the church where John and Jacque Kennedy were married, as her family was part of the super rich who lived in the mansions here along the other side of the city. We passed on the mansion walk along the cliffs because of the weather, and were glad we didn’t waste the time, as we heard a lot of grumbling on the tender back out to the ship about the tour of them, in which all the cattle got to see were a lot of shrubs and hedges hiding the homes from the street. Duh…

Carol went and got a massage and some sort of seaweed treatment this afternoon while I just wasted some time, which of course, is my specialty act. They are pulling up the hook and the scurvy should be sailing in a few minutes. It’s an early dinner and Game Three of Series tonight, as they have decided now that we are back in the U.S. to pipe the games right into our staterooms.

It is probably going to be another rough night, as the fog and rain has increased and so has the movement of the ship, even at anchor in the harbor here. Something real interesting happened as we were getting ready to leave this evening. This three-masted schooner almost ran into the bow of our ship. You could hear the anchor coming up and this guy sailed right under the bow! Got a few photos of this fool out there.

So until New York tomorrow….