Newport

I decided to spend the day in Newport and get some sun and rah air. It is a 2 dollar bus ride from Providence and takes about an hour and fifteen minutes.

This is basically a yachting playpen, and if anyone out there still thinks that Circus Philosophicus is a non-fiction book, no i do not and have never hanged out with yachters and croquet players. I laughed aloud while writing those passages.

Back to Newport. I did the whole cliff walk, which I read somewhere is 3.5 miles, but i really doubt it’s quite that long. At first it is so well paved that your grandmother could walk it, and I scoffed at first about the sprained ankle warning I had heard. I scoffed too soon. In a number of places there is no path at all and you have to clamber over rocksand boulders for 100 yards, and i did nearly roll my ankle a few times. Nice, moderate exercise, all in all.

The cliff walk goes past numerous run of the mill mansions. Along with a handful of compounds so huge they can only belong to Kennedy type foggers. And indeed, JFK and Jackie were married here.

Before that, I took a boat ride, always the beat first thing to do in a waterfront town to relax and get a sense of the geogrhical layout. Again, many many yachts. The two our captain was able to identify were the property of Malcolm Forbes and Billy Joel.

And there is a history of philosophy attraction one block from the cafe where I now sit. It deserves a separate post of its own, coming next.