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I don't want to start another August column asking, "Where did the summer go?" but where did the summer go? It's already time for corn, deep summer family vacations, and bowls filled with garden tomatoes. And fruit flies everywhere in the kitchen--the downside of abundance.
This is the time we ask ourselves if we did summer justice. Did we thoroughly soak ourselves in sunshine, take the boat out, pick blueberries, eat enough burgers, hear enough music, brush enough sand off our feet? You don't want to lament any unfulfilled dreams on a future snowy day.
I went to Rhode Island last weekend to visit my daughter who thinks Rhode Island is the biggest untold secret in all of human history. Most people head to Cape Cod or Maine, or merely include Rhode Island as a day trip when vacationing in New England, but you can truly spend a whole week here and sample everything New England has to offer in one tiny state. And you'll fall in love.
Rhode Island is so small that when you tell someone you're driving across the state, you barely have time to finish the sentence before you've arrived. At just 1,214 square miles, Rhode Island is the smallest state in the country.
And yet, its size is one of its greatest charms. Everything feels accessible. Providence has the restaurants, universities, architecture and cultural energy of a much larger city, but drive 30 or 40 minutes and you can be standing beside the Atlantic, wandering through a historic village or eating something involving a clam that was probably minding its own business that morning. Remarkably fresh seafood is a huge selling point here.
There really is something wonderfully manageable and magical about Rhode Island. It has a surprisingly large presence for such a tiny patch of America. Newport gave us the Gilded Age mansions and generations of America's wealthiest families arriving for the summer. Providence gave us Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Narragansett Bay cuts so deeply into the state that water seems to be everywhere. Rhode Island has more than 400 miles of coastline when you count all those bays, coves and islands--which helps explain why a state this small can feel so thoroughly maritime. Water, water everywhere. It's remarkable.
Start with Providence--a city that punches well above its weight. Walk around College Hill and the Brown University campus, explore the historic streets of the East Side, and leave plenty of time to eat. Providence has developed an impressive restaurant scene, helped along by Johnson & Wales University with its culinary school and generations of immigrant families who brought their food traditions with them.
The Providence River cuts through town and new parks and green space beside it makes for wonderful walking.
Then head to Newport, where America's Gilded Age is still on extravagant display. Tour The Breakers, the Vanderbilt family's 70-room summer "cottage," and walk at least part of the Cliff Walk, where enormous mansions sit on one side and the Atlantic crashes below on the other. Downtown Newport, with its harbor, sailboats and colonial buildings, is worth an afternoon of its own. It's right out of a movie set. This is where you sample clam chowder at least twice in an afternoon at two different restaurants. It's a must.
Another day, take the ferry to Block Island, about 13 miles offshore. The island feels wonderfully removed from mainland life, with beaches, clapboard shops, lighthouses, bicycles and miles of open landscape. And if you've decided against the craziness and expense of Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket, a visit to Block Island will make you feel you've been to both.
I truly love the Rhode Island countryside, where old stone walls disappear into fields, weathered barns sit quietly beneath enormous trees, and narrow roads seem to wander wherever they please. There is something gentle about the landscape--just deeply, unmistakably New England. The ocean never feels very far away, even when you can't see it, and little villages appear around bends as if they've been waiting there for centuries. Rhode Island may be small, but its countryside has a way of making the world feel wonderfully large. And beautiful.
It's roughly an eight-hour drive from Jamestown to Providence, which is less time than it took me to fly, including the drive to the Buffalo airport and then the gate waiting, and the other shenanigans of air travel.
The Providence airport is very accommodating, with flights coming and going from major cities around the country. It's small enough to be easy to navigate, and Providence itself is only 15 minutes away. So whether you drive or fly, Rhode Island is close enough for a long weekend--and simply amazing
enough to make you wonder why you haven't gone sooner.