The Last Days

Thursday we drove to north to Providence for a tour of Brown University.  Jane, Rose and I took the tour while Mark and the boys explored Providence.  I think Jane decided that Brown was her favorite of the three schools we toured in the east.  It is another beautiful school and campus with amazing history.

Friday and it's PERFECT weather brought us back to the beach.  It is crazy how many people can fit on one beach!  It was crowded, but the waves were great.  The kids boogie boarded for ever.  Thomas was the first to come out and as he was  picking seaweed out of his swimsuit, realized that there were bugs in the seaweed and therefore bugs all over him, including in the swimsuit!  Ted, Jane and Rose followed out of the water not long after him and were horrified to find the same issue!  Needless to say, no one went back in the water!  But Ted made a great sand "chair" and the rest of us relaxed in the sun.

I had the last of three lobster rolls and George's of Galilee on the water, delicious....., but forgot to get a picture of the last one.

Today we packed our bags and left our house in Narragansett to head back to Boston for the night. 

                                                             Our van for the week

We stopped at JFK's birthplace in Brookline, MA.  The home is a National Historic Site.  Jane, Ted and I went in to check it out and found that there were guided tours, but knew that everyone else didn't really have it in them to do another tour, so the three of us just took in what we could.  It was pretty cool to see and imagine Rose and Joe and all of those kids living in that house along with their housemaids.  The Kennedy's sold the house in 1920, but Rose re-purchased the house in 1966, so she could have the home restored to her recollection of it's 1917 appearance when Jack was born.  She donated the home in 1967 to the National Park System.

 Mark and I got the kids settled at the hotel and left to return the rental car.  We decided to make pit stop in downtown Boston, as we hadn't really hit the Beacon Hill area.  We saw the location of the Boston Marathon bombing which was quite surreal.

One last night in Boston.  We will be turning in early as our flight back to Minneapolis leaves at 6:55 a.m.!

It was another fantastic vacation.  As I always like to mention, this is a group of fantastic travelers.  They go with the flow and are open to trying new things, like uber and mass transit.   We don't know what our future travel plans will bring as we have a girl that turns eighteen next year and will be going who knows where to college and may not have the time for us next summer.  I hope that we can continue to travel together as a family for many years to come, as it is some of my favorite time.

Thank you for everything.....Mark, Jane, Rose, Tom and Ted, you are all the best!

Birthday fun

Tuesday found us in Newport, RI for the famous mansions tour. www.newportmansions.org

The history here is just amazing.  The Breakers was built by the Vanderbilt family between 1893-1895 and has just under 63,000 square feet of living space!  Yes, that is right, 63 thousand!

We also visited The Elms, which was completely different from the Breakers, but also quite amazing. The Preservation Society of Newport has done an amazing job with these homes, many of which were slated to be torn down over the years.

Wednesday we took the one hour ferry ride from Point Judith(near our house) to Block Island.

 I seem to find one place on each of our vacations that just hits everything that I love and Block Island was it!  Each shop that we stopped in was more charming than the last.  The scenery and homes were so New England.

We knew that we wanted to rent some mode of transportation, but because we have such different ideas of what would be "fun", some wanted a jeep, others wanted scooters and still others wanted bikes.  In the end, it wasn't our decision, because there were no jeeps available and Jane was not feeling confident with the scooter and having one of her siblings needing to be on the back, so bikes it was!(that was my choice)  And it was GREAT!

 We rode from one end of the island to the other on very hilly terrain, as in hills that you had to get off your bike to walk it up.   Those kids were troopers.  The weather helped because it was the most perfect day, sun was out, but the breeze coming off the ocean was cool.  We saw some amazing sights, probably things that wouldn't have been appreciated from a jeep.  The lighthouse marks the north end of the island and the first settlers arrived in 1661!  They unloaded their cattle off of their ships and had them swim to shore.

When we rode to the south end of the island, there was stopping point where you could walk down(and back up!) 120 stairs to the ocean.  So beautiful.  At the top of these stairs there is a look out point where you can see Montauk, NY.

Block Island is definitely a place that we will return to in the future, most likely to stay right on the island.

Thomas won't be happy about this one, but he has been struggling all trip long without sunglasses and having to have his picture taken into the sun.  The face on this picture is priceless!

Sunny adventures

Sunday we drove to Watch Hill, Rhode Island.  What a beautiful town on the coast.  Of course we had to check out Taylor Swift's $17,000,000 mansion there in town.  It was spectacular!  It's funny how we have visited two of her homes on our trips and we don't even have any Taylor Swift fans!!

                                          Secret passage way to the beach next to her house

 From Watch Hill, we headed further south, to Mystic, CT.  It's kind of fun to be able to go from state to state so quickly.  Mystic is where the movie Mystic Pizza(about three waitresses at a pizza place) is based and partially filmed.  Of course we had to go to the restaurant for lunch.  The pizza was great!

 In Mystic there is a really awesome lift bridge and we just happened to be in the right place eating our ice cream at the right time to get to see it go up!

Today we decided to stick around Narragansett and explore our surroundings.  We walked to the ocean and along the seawall.  It's a great little town.
Some beach time was next at  Roger Wheeler State Beach.

The boys spent some time trying to catch a seagull for me.  I've always wanted to take one home with me.

               Ended the day with a famous Del's Frozen Lemonade, a Rhode Island must have.

New England adventures

I am re-reading my final post from last summer's blog realizing that I never finished it!  I blogged our last day, but I always like to add in a recap of it all.  It's too late to do that now, so I will start anew with East Coast Summer 2016!  It's hard to believe an entire year has gone by already, time just keeps flying by.  We officially finished our 48 mainland states last year.  No one had a huge desire to try Alaska or Hawaii this summer, so we discussed and decided that because the east is our favorite and Jane wanted to look at some colleges, we would plan for an area of New England that we hadn't been to yet.  One huge change for us this year is that we decided to FLY!!

The boys were very excited to try something new, Jane was bummed out, she loves the long drives, but we just didn't have the three weeks to dedicate to the trip this year.

We headed out bright and early on Wednesday, July 27th flying from MSP to BOS.  The flight went well and as soon as we landed, we split up.  Jane and I grabbed the subway to MIT for a tour and Mark and the other kids went to Fenway Park for a Red Sox game(Thomas' favorite team).  Dustin Pedroia even hit a home run for him!

 It was HOT and their seats were in the sun, so they were pretty spent by the time we met back up for dinner. MIT is a beautiful campus that sits right across the Charles River from downtown Boston.



Thursday was a day of sightseeing in Boston.  A ride on the duck boats, walking the Freedom Trail, Old North Church("one if by land, two if by sea"), the USS Constitution(Old Iron Sides), the Cassin Young and so many more historical sights along the way. I think I could spend days in Boston!

Friday was a day everyone was so excited for.  We went to one of our favorite places in the whole country, Rockport, MA and it did not disappoint!  We left Boston on the train in the rain, but by the time we arrived and hour later the sun was peaking out and brought a gorgeous day.  We had to follow our traditions and ate lunch at Top Dog Hotdogs....delicious.  Then dessert at the The Ice Cream Store....more delicious!

We took the train back to Boston and it dropped us at North Station which is in the heart of Little Italy.  We picked the restaurant with the longest line, that way we knew the food would be worth it!!  Being a Friday night, the people watching was great and helped pass the time.  The kids had fun just going crazy ordering anything they wanted, usually I'm telling them to order off the kids menu and "nothing extra"!  The food delivered....fantastic.  I think we licked our plates.  One mishap that will be apparant in future photos was the extremely hot red sauce that hit my chin and gave me a nice burn.

Saturday morning the girls and I Uber'd it to Harvard for our second college tour of the trip, while the boys packed up the hotel room and picked up our rental car.  We had been to Harvard a couple of years back, but didn't take the "official" tour, so we learned many interesting things about the oldest university in the United States.  To me the most interesting thing was that the admissions office is looking more for interesting students that will give something to the world in the future along with "nice" students, way more than students with a specific GPA or test score.  They pride themselves in being forward thinking.

The boys met us in Harvard Square and we hit the highway for Rhode Island where we are renting a house for a week.  We arrived in Narragansett around 4:00 p.m.  The area is filled with tiny coastal towns.  We went to dinner on the Harbor where I got the first of many lobster rolls to come!

The night ended with a trip to the grocery store for supplies and a movie at the house.  Great start to the week!

Side note: you may see way more pics of Ted than anyone else.  That is because he is the only one that allows us to take any!  Thomas is very against all pictures and the girls need to proof anything we take!  So, because he is easy, he gets the limelight.