Today we continued to explore Newport and started by walking along the cliff path which seems to have been around for ages but was rebuilt after the hurricane in 2012. We had breakfast in the room and it was another bright sunny day, but by the time we were ready to leave the sea mist had come in and we could hardly see the end of the road! We talked about changing our mind about what we planned to do but in the end we decided to start walking and see what happens and by the time we had started walking along the front the mist started to clear and by the time we got to the entrance to the cliff walk it had completely cleared again so we walked along the sea shore and watched the surfers I am not sure what they are looking for, but the waves I thought would be perfect for surfing they seemed to avoid then others which didn’t look so good they seemed to go for. We walked along the cliff path to the 40 steps which is basically 40 steps down to a lookout which is slightly lower down, it doesn’t explain why they were built but we climbed down them and back up again! You get a good view of some of the mansions walking along the path. We followed the path to the rock section and decided not to go any further as the map at the start had suggested that the path is replaced by you walking over rocks and along the sand and as it was high tide we thought better of it. As it turned out where we came off the path was just down from the two houses we wanted to visit today so we went round to Marble house, this was built by Alva Vanderbilt who saw herself as American royalty and it shows from the way that she decorated the house. She modelled the house on the Palace of Versailles and imported 500,000 cubic feet of marble. Alva Vanderbilt was one of the prime movers in the votes for women campaign but having listened to her story on the audio guide it was very much about showing off and and rather than keeping up with the Joneses she wanted to be the Joneses. She forced her daughter (Consuelo) to marry the Duke of Marlborough which was later annulled but this was all about further improving the social standing of the Vanderbilt family name. From there we went to Rosecliff which was built by Theresa Fair Oelrichs, she hosted fabulous entertainments including hosting Harry Houdini and Noel Coward. Tessie was the daughter of an Irish immigrant who’d made his fortune in Silver and she was apparently very outgoing and not the shrinking violet of the other families that decamped to Rhode Island for the summer. It was after lunch by the time we had finished walking round so we started walking down towards the harbour and after stopping for lunch we walked down to the area where you could watch the America’s Cup from when it was held here from 1930 to 1983, they now hold a regatta for schooners and one is moored on the dock. By the time we had finished walking round it was gone 4pm so we started walking back to the apartment to have a bit of a relax as we have walked quite a long way today. As we were walking back the sea mist started coming in again and you could feel the coolness in the air, hopefully it will stay nice but possibly cool down a bit so that we stand a change of seeing the colours as we continue to head to the north.
