moresueandstevestravels: RHODE ISLAND and CONNECTICUT

Day 3 and an early start: bags out and breakfast at 6.30 am, bus leaves at 7.30 am.
We drove back north through Cape Cod to the mainland, then through SE Massachusetts. Lynne pointed out to us that our journey this morning would take us through a region with little to see. South east Massachusetts has repeatedly fallen on hard times economically: initially whaling, and then textile manufacture bringing prosperity before slumping and closing down in the face of cheaper competition and mechanisation.
We drove past, but didn't stop in, New Bedford, 'the whaling capital of the world', with 19th century houses and cobblestoned streets paid for with whaling money: then past Fall River, a 'glum fishing and industrial town',according to the 'Rough Guide', whose greatest call to fame is Lizzie Borden who, in 1892, murdered her father and step-mother with an axe.

RHODE ISLAND:

Just 48 miles north to south by 37 miles east to west, Rhode Island is the smallest state in the Union, but its influence on national life has been disproportionately large, enacting in 1652 the first law against slavery in North America and, just over 10 years later, being the first state to guarantee religious freedom.
In 1636 Reverend Roger Williams established the colony of Providence as a 'lively experiment' in religious freedom. (He finally secured a charter from Charles II guaranteeing religious freedom in the colony in 1663.) In the 1640s Providence, Portsmouth and Newport combined as the 'Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations' and it soon became a safe haven for Baptists, Quakers and Jews, though attempts to ban slavery failed.
Rhode Island flourished economically and was the first state to declare independence from Britain, in 1776, and the last to ratify the US Constitution in 1790. Between the Revolution and Civil War, the state's economic focus shifted from maritime trade to manufacturing, the textile industry luring thousands of immigrant workers.
Since the 1930s Rhode Island has been staunchly Democrat.

NEWPORT

Newport was first settled in 1639 by refugees from Anne Hutchinson's colony in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, and others from Massachusetts seeking religious freedom. In the 18th century Newport grew into a bustling port with the local fleet heavily involved in the slave trade. In 1776 prosperity was brought to a halt when British and Hessian troops occupied the town, blockading the harbour and forcing the residents to burn the wharves as firewood in the harsh winter. Though the British left in 1779, the economy never fully recovered, and this explains why Newport is not the state capital.
It had been seen as a resort town in the 1730s with wealthy Southern merchants flocking to escape the summer heat, but the boom began in 1880 when socialite Caroline Astor opened up house here (her husband, William B Astor Jnr. purchased the house as a gift). It became a necessity for virtually everyone else in New York 'society' to attend.Wealthy families competed to outdo each other with a string of lavish mansions and annual parties. The years of excess lasted only a few decades, its demise beginning with the introduction of US income tax in 1913, and by the early 1940s most of the mansions had closed for good.
Lynne had arranged for Casey, a local guide, to join our bus for a 30 minute tour of Newport, pointing out and explaining all about the mansions to us, before we visited the Breakers. Apart from their individual size, what struck us about them was their general ugliness: building to impress and out-do your neighbour was obviously the only objective.

THE BREAKERS

Cornelius Vanderbilt II, grandson of the first Cornelius (founder of the family fortune) was the president and chairman of the New York Central Railroad when he commissioned Richard Morris Hunt to build the mansion on his 13-acre ocean-front estate - his original clapboard summer house had just burned down and Vanderbilt was determined to build exclusively in limestone and marble. The four-storey Italian Renaissance-style palace was completed in 1895 at a cost of $15 million (at least $400 million today).

After the 'last golden summer' of 1937, the house was closed for 10 years before opening to the public.
Photography inside the building is not allowed so click on the link below to have a look inside
.http://www.newportmansions.org/explore/the-breakers

We were allowed to take pictures from a marbled loggia

which showed us the spectacular views that gave the house its name.

Our verdict was that the house had been less gross in its conspicuous consumption than we had feared in advance: certainly less so than Hearst Castle in California. That said, under-stated it wasn't, and certainly, despite the obvious efforts to portray the house as a regular family cottage, it was impossible to imagine any vestige of family life ever taking place there. Interestingly, unlike with Hearst Castle, our fellow American coach trippers expressed the same view of the place as us.

Time for a stroll around town,

then lunch at the Barking Crab (!)

where Steve had guess what?

CONNECTICUT

Connecticut is New England's southernmost state and most influenced by New York City, thousands of commuters travelling between the two every day. The state is mainly rural, but densely populated along the coast.

First settled by Europeans in the 1660s as a series of different colonies, the 2 most significant ( Connecticut Colony and New Haven Colony) were forcibly united by the English in 1662. During the Revolution Connecticut's role in supplying the war effort earned it the nickname of the Provisions State .With steady industrialisation in the late 18th and 19th centuries, the state prospered.

Today, Connecticut remains fairly liberal, legalising same-sex marriage in 2008, and tending to vote Democrat.

Mystic:

It had been raining steadily all day but the heavens really opened when we stopped in the afternoon at the town of Mystic. The Mystic River splits the town in two, both sides connected by a 1922 drawbridge of a bascule ( French: seesaw) sort which is raised hourly at 40 minutes past the hour.

Mystic is best known throughout the US for the film Mystic Pizza, which brought Julia Roberts to fame, and we were shown the said pizza parlour. We didn't eat there but there was a shuttle bus from the hotel and some others on the tour raved about their pizzas, though others admitted that they had been nothing that special!

MYSTIC SEAPORT

http://www.mysticseaport.org/

This afternoon's stop was at the Museum of America and the Sea, otherwise known as Mystic Seaport, one of America's largest maritime museums. Founded in 1929 on a nineteen-acre riverfront site once occupied by shipyards, the museum was divided into distinct parts:

The Preservation Shipyard dedicated to the restoration of the 1841 Charles W. Morgan, a huge wooden whaling ship that now offers cruises along the river.