Girls' Weekend, Providence, Rhode Island, October 2018, last full day

It has arrived.  The last full day of Girls' Weekend.  We always hate to see this day come, but it always does.  The only thing we have planned for today is to go and get matching Girls' Weekend tattoos.  This was Kathi's idea and I enthusiastically agreed when she proposed it.  She did some research a couple of days ago and made the appointment for us.  Noon today.  As usual we slowly got our day going by hanging out on our computers some and getting some things done.  Kathi made us breakfast.  She ate the leftover tuna noodle casserole that I had made the first night we were here and she made me a mini omelet that she filled with some cheese, broccoli and a little bit of salami.  We actually did pretty good this year in regards to food.  We tend to buy WAY more food that we can eat, but we got it about right this time.  I showered while Kathi made breakfast and we sat down on our couches to eat and chat when I happened to glance at the time.  11:27!!!  Yikes! Our tattoo appointment is for noon and Kathi hasn't showered yet!!  I have to say that I don't think I have ever seen her move so fast!!  We actually made it pretty much right on time to the Ugly Duckling Tattoo company.  Kathi had come up with a cool design and a-tattooing we did go!!

When we realized that we needed cash, it turned out that Kathi didn't have enough and I had barely enough.  While Kathi was getting tattooed, I walked about a 1/2 mile to a nearby CVS to use their cash machine.  After Kathi was done, it was my turn.  It has been a couple of years since I got the only other tattoo that I have and I have to say I forgot how much it hurts!!  Mission accomplished we tried to figure out what we wanted to do for the remainder of the day.  Once we did a little internet searching we found out that the Fantastic Umbrella Factory (which is NOT an umbrella factory at all) was listed as being open until 6 and we decided to go even though it was 3 pm and a 45 minute drive.  It was the one "place one should see while in Rhode Island" left on the lists I had found on where one should go while in Rhode Island.

While on the way, Kathi decided to share one of her articles with me for one of her communication classes to educate me a bit.  The article however was 10 years old and the topic, in my mind, was nearly obsolete.  It was a research article on how e-mail was utilized by college students for communication with friends, family and loved ones near and far.  I feel that this is not much of a relevant topic in today's world because I am pretty sure that the only thing that my kids use e-mail for is either work or school related, NOT as a means of communicating with friends and loved ones.  Oh my goodness, how far we have come in terms of communication in the past 10 years!!

Once we reached the Fantastic Umbrella Factory, we were disappointed to find out that only 2 of the 6 shops were open, all the rest were closed for the season and that closing time was 5 not 6.  However Kathi and I being who we are, we made the best of the time we had and wondered around this charming, quirky place.  This place is basically a farm on which they have added buildings for shops and where they hold events.  There are lovely gardens and even a stand of bamboo.  There a chickens and peahens that roam around freely on the grounds and a few emus and goats that are penned in.  I learned that emus make a very strange hollow, drum-like noise along with looking, to my mind, quite prehistoric.  There is something dinosaur-like about their head and face. We decided that we were hungry and Kathi asked one of the nice ladies working in one of the open shops for a recommendation.  She said that a place not too far down the road in the direction in which we would be headed is spoken off highly by all the locals.  Called Matunuck Oyster Bar.  I, of course, was a bit suspicious because I don't care for seafood, but we checked out the menu on-line and it appeared that there were items that I could be happy with, so off we went.

This turned out to be a great tip and, fortunately, we arrived before the crowds. Kathi got some oysters on the half shell for an appetizer while I ordered the salad with beets and goat cheese for mine.  We were both very happy with these choices.  For dinner Kathi ordered the fish and chips (but substituted a salad for the chips), and I ordered the penne pesto with chicken.  We were both, once again, happy with our choices.  While eating we watch a beautiful sunset over a little inlet that the restaurant overlooked.  A fitting last meal for this trip.

Once we made our way back to the apartment, after stopping for some aquaphor for our tattoos,  we settled in for the evening.  Kathi with homework, me with the blog, then eventually we watched the last episode of season one of Goliath since Kathi fell asleep for the ending the night before.

Tomorrow we pack up and head to the airport.  Time to get back to our normal lives after sharing yet another wonderful time together.  We are blessed.

Oh, and next year???  South Dakota, here we come!

After yet another blissful nights' sleep, we woke up around 8'ish to begin our day.  We don't have much on the agenda today.  Kathi has homework that HAS to be done by noon today so the morning was devoted to computer time, BUT we do have a TWO HOUR massage schedule or noon.  This is definitely something that I indulge in almost solely on Girls' Weekend and it is always wonderful.

While we were working on our computers in the morning, I received a message from our hostess letting us know that there was a festival happening in downtown Providence that we might be interested in.  Seems weird for there to be a festival on a Monday, I know, but what we realized is that it is Columbus Day and therefore a holiday (kind of.....I know it's not considered a holiday at MY work!!)  The festival is called PRONK. (http://providencehonkfest.org) It is actually the Providence HONK! festival, but they have shortened the name to PRONK.

 Apparently there are many HONK! festivals that take place across the country. It is a "joyous reclamation" of public space. It is a music festival, a public party and a day for activism.  Anyone who shows up can participate in the parade and from what we saw it is a day to dress crazily, let your hair down and let you politics be known.

 It has to be one of the weirdest and most interesting festivals I have been to.  We hung out here for a couple of hours, joining the parade and listening to some music and people watching, when we decided that we were hungry and ready to head back to our home base.  We initially tried to get food at a place near all of the action called the Hot Club, but the place was so packed and understaffed that we gave up.  We had decided that hamburgers sounded good, so I found a burger place named "Harry's Bar & Burgers" that was within a mile and in the direction of our car and we set out.  Obviously a popular spot with the locals we had a little bit of a wait, but the "sliders" and sweet potato fries we were served were worth it.

We walked back to the car on what proved to be yet another very pleasant evening in regards to weather and made our way back "home".  Kathi did some homework, I worked on this blog, then we watched some more Goliath.  I fell asleep off and on, but was awake for the final episode and the big finale, but Kathi missed it.  She was completely zonked out. I think it was around 1am when we finally went to bed.

Tomorrow, the only thing we have planned is to get our Girls' Weekend tattoos!!

Girls' Weekend 2018, Providence, Rhode Island, Day 4

Riding the rails and cliff walking.  These are the items on our agenda today.  When I was researching Providence, Rhode Island on Pinterest during the past year an interesting picture popped up showing two people on some sort of vehicle on railroad tracks that was powered by those on it pedaling.  Interested, I clicked on it and made my way to https://www.railexplorers.net.  This looked like something that Kathi and I would definitely enjoy doing so I booked us for a ride.  What a treat!!  We went for a 2 mile ride and we loved it.  Once we got moving it wasn't really all that much work to keep moving.  I was fearful that pedaling for an hour straight would leave me with wobbly legs at the end due to tired muscles.  Not at all!  I have since found out that there is a similar company in Oregon that provides rides on a rail/trail near the coast.  I am definitely going to book a trip for Tom and I come spring.

Once done with this adventure, we drove into Newport to hike on the Cliff Walk.  This is a world famous public right of way that lies between the Rhode Island shoreline and some magnificent mansions built on the bluff that have truly marvelous views of the ocean.  It is a National Recreation Trail in a National Historic District.  There are several mansions whose enormous lawns back up to the trail.  Unfortunately there are many that you cannot see from the trail due to fences and trees and bushes, but you can see enough of them to know that these are not your normal homes.  These are GIGANTIC buildings that lots of money was poured into.  Several of the mansions are now part of Salve Regina University, a private Catholic university offering many undergraduate and graduate programs, that I had never heard of until this trip.

It was a great day for both of these activities, although a bit humid and, by far, the warmest day since we have been here (I think it got up to the mid 70's).  We were both feeling pretty wiped out by the time we arrived back at the car.  After making a quick stop at the liquor store for some wine and pork rinds (eeeewwwww!!!) for Kathi, we tucked into the apartment for an evening of Goliath on Amazon Prime.  Our dinner consisted of cheese,crackers, salami and yogurt and fruit.  It was quite delicious.

I think the massages that we have scheduled for tomorrow are going to be well-timed after the 4 or so miles we put on our bodies today.

Oh, and here are the states that we are down to for next year!  I am keeping my fingers crossed for Texas.

Girls' Weekend 2018, Rhode Island, Day 3

As day 3 of Girls' Weekend begins let me just say that Kathi and I feel so very blessed that we have this time together and feel that God always smiles down on us wherever we are!

Today's plan is to travel to Watch Hill, Rhode Island, which in addition to looking like a cute little town to visit, is also where Taylor Swift owns a beautiful mansion.  This town would, most likely, not have been a destination spot for us but Kathi's PhD advisor, Katy Head, apparently is a Taylor Swift fanatic and when she found out that Kathi would be in Rhode Island expressed her desire to live vicariously through Kathi with a visit to the mansion (or at least as close as we could get).  Not wanting to disappoint and always open to places to go and things to do while on these trips we thought, why not?

After a leisurely morning of lounging on the couches perusing the internet, eating cheesy scrambled eggs and all those things that we enjoy doing,  we showered and hopped into the car and headed south to Watch Hill.  Ok, so while Taylor Swift's house is probably the largest home in the town and sits on the highest point, it is by no means the ONLY mansion in Watch Hill.  This town is obviously home to many wealthy folks.  We did hit a yard sale while driving around town (my husband will be very proud of me for this), thinking we would find something amazing in a yard sale at one of these homes, but, I have to say we were disappointed in the offerings.  However the homeowner was a charming Peruvian man who came out and whom we had a delightful chat with.  We made our way out toward the Watch Hill lighthouse, where I had read one could see Taylor's home.  We determined which home was hers, took a few pictures then made our way back toward our car.  We had to park at the foot of the road that goes out to the lighthouse because it is a private road on which there are several of the aforementioned mansions.  There was a security guard posted at this spot to ensure that only the residents or senior citizens drive down this road.  We stopped to talk with him a bit on our way out to be sure that we had correctly identified Taylor's house.  He assured us that we were correct and went on to tell us that she almost never spends time there.  He said that she seems to have received many death threats in the past while here and that may be part of why she doesn't come here very often.  I had read somewhere that she likes to have 4th of July parties there for all her friends, but he told us that she hasn't even done that for the past couple of years.  She spent $17 million to buy this home, which had sat vacant for 10 years before she purchased it, sunk another several million on renovating and now spends very little to no time there.  So sad.  And the place is massively huge.  Would be very lonely to be there all by oneself.  Oh Taylor, I am so sorry that you cannot enjoy this beautiful home with its beautiful view.

Taylor Swift's beautiful Rhode Island mansion

We walked around the town a bit and ended up having some delicious sandwiches for lunch at a cute little ice cream shop/deli where we, of course, had some ice cream for dessert.  We then got back in the car and made our way back to Providence to find our way to a spot to watch the WaterFire event.

WaterFire is an event that I had been told about by a native of Rhode Island at a work meeting a few years back and I always kept in the back of my mind as something we should try and attend when we made our way here.  Fortunately (and this is one of those examples of God smiling down on us), it just so happened that the weekend that we chose to come here had a WaterFire event scheduled.  We actually made our way in downtown Providence and found a parking spot that was quite close to the main event which was to begin at 6:15.  We were a bit early (about 5pm) and so chose to walk to Providence Place mall to get something to drink before the event started.  There is lots of water in Providence.  From Wikipedia: "Providence is located at the head of Narragansett Bay, with the Providence River running into the bay through the center of the city, formed by the confluence of the Moshassuck and Woonasquatucket Rivers. The Waterplace Park amphitheater and riverwalks line the river's banks through downtown."  So the walk to the mall was a walk along the canal where boats were loading up the braziers with wood for the event.  

I am going to, once again, provide you with a quote from Wikipedia that I think describes this beautiful event quite well. "WaterFire is an award-winning sculpture by Barnaby Evans presented on the rivers of downtown Providence, RI. It was first created by Evans in 1994 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of First Night Providence, and has since become an annual public art phenomenon.

WaterFire is simultaneously a free public art installation, a performance work, an urban festival, a civic ritual, and a spiritual communal ceremony, well known nationally and internationally as a community arts event. WaterFire’s symbolism and interpretation is both inclusive and expansive - reflecting the recognition that individuals must act together to strengthen and preserve their community.

On WaterFire evenings, downtown Providence is transformed by eighty six anchored burning braziers (each with approximately 33 pieces of wood) that float just above the surface of the rivers that flow through Waterplace Park (the Woonasquatucket river) and the middle of downtown Providence (the Moshassuckand Providence rivers). The public is invited to come and walk the riverfront and enjoy the beauty of the flickering firelight, the fragrant scent of aromatic wood smoke, the changing silhouettes of the volunteer firetenders, and the music from around the world. Average attendance is 40,000 a night, ranging from 10,000 to 100,000."  It is a beautiful, moving and wonderful event that I would highly recommend you attend if you ever find yourself in Providence, Rhode Island when an event is scheduled.

By this time we were both pretty tired but we had signed up to do an Escape Room at 9:30.  This is another activity I would highly recommend if you are looking for something to do in place of a night out to the movies.  We had a little time to kill so found a coffee shop/bar (New Harvest coffee roasters) where we set up our computers for about an hour in which I worked on the blog for yesterday's post and Kathi worked on homework.  Shortly after 9, we folded up and set out to find our Escape Room.

After a 10 minute walk, we found Escape Rhode Island and walked up to the second floor where we greeted by our very enthusiastic hostess who laid out all the rules for us before escorting us (and it turned out it was just Kathi and I) to our room to begin our adventure called "Speakeasy".  It was a fun room with great puzzles, but, alas and once again, we were foiled and did not solve all the puzzles in the allotted 60 minutes.  I am starting to get a bit of a complex about this.  This is probably the 6th escape room that I have done and I haven't made it out of ANY of them.  All the ones that Kathi has done have been done with me so, she too, has never made it out of one!!  We will keep trying, though, because they are fun.

Once done, we walked back to our car (which was close to both Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design), made our way "home" and promptly turned in.

Tomorrow, we ride the rails and go for a cliff walk.

Girls Weekend 2018, Providence, Rhode Island, Day 2

our place in Providence, Rhode Island

After another glorious night of uninterrupted sleep, Kathi and I both woke up and started our day at around 8am.  A peek out the window shows us a beautiful day.  We start the day at a very leisurely pace.  We hang out in the living room for quite some time doing stuff on our computers.  Kathi is doing homework (again), while I am doing stuff like checking e-mail and social media.  Once I feel caught up, I start to work on the blog post for day 1.  We finally eat a little breakfast.  Kathi puts together bowls of yogurt and fruit for us.  When it gets to be around noon we decide that we should start getting ready to go to the zoo since it closes at 4 pm.  Once showered and dressed we head out the door for our first adventure of this trip.  By the time that we arrive at the zoo, we discover that it is only open for one more hour, then it is closed until 6pm when it reopens for the "Pumpkin Spectacular".  Since we have both been to many zoos & we would only have an hour to wander the zoo before it closes we decided that we were both quite hungry and chose to go in search of somewhere to eat.  A search on Yelp revealed a very interesting place called TROOP, that was described as serving various street foods from around the world.  This sounded good to both of us, so Kathi put the address into Google maps and off we went.

Unfortunately, much like to adventure to the grocery store, I believe that we managed to miss a number of turns or took the wrong fork in the road and took about the longest route possible to get to our desired destination!  Once there, however, we were delighted with our choice.  Very funky, decidedly unique place with skateboards for chair backs and loudly playing hip hop music.  After looking over the menu, Kathi chose a roasted vegetable street taco, while I chose chicken.  We also each ordered a side of Mexican street corn (corn roasted then seasoned with a Mexican cheese and a twist of lime, quite delicious) and shared some yucca fries served with some kind of aioli sauce.  Sated and happy we realized it was time to go back to the zoo.

We had to do some waiting before the gates to the zoo were opened, but once they were, we headed in and purchased our tickets for the Soaring Eagle Zip ride.  We were than directed to the path we were to follow for the viewing of the pumpkins.  We had to wait again for a while until the sun went down so that it would be dark enough for us to fully enjoy the pumpkins and I have to say that it was worth the wait. There were pumpkins EVERYWHERE!!  Big pumpkins, medium pumpkins, small pumpkins, pumpkins on the ground, pumpkins in the trees.  It truly is an amazing display of pumpkins!!  Now, Kathi and I are not convinced that the big pumpkins were really carved.  We suspect they were painted, but enough of the guts were removed that the still could be lit from inside.  They had several themes for different areas of pumpkins; Disney movies, video games, Harry Potter and Stranger Things being a few examples of these themed areas.  So, though it appeared that the larger pumpkins may have been painted rather than carved, all the small and medium size pumpkins were definitely carved and there were hundreds, maybe even thousands of them.  They must have a GIGANTIC carving party to get all these pumpkins carved.


Once we were through the pumpkins it was time for the Soaring Eagle Zip ride.  We were disappointed to find out that the camera that they normally use to snap photos of people as they are riding the zip line was malfunctioning, so, sadly, we do not have any photos of us riding the zip line.  It is a zip line unlike any other that we have ever ridden.  It actually seems more like a chair lift at a ski resort, because you actually sit in a two sitter chair like device rather than being roped and strapped up like most zip lines.  Once buckled in, you fly backwards up to the top of the line, then after a short stop at the top, you ride back down.  It was a short ride but still fun!  This ended our adventure at the zoo.

While walking through the pumpkins on what turned out to be a bit of a chilly evening, Kathi turned to me and said that she thought we should get some hot chocolate and cookies on the way home for an evening snack.  I wholeheartedly agreed as long as, instead of store cookies, we bought chocolate chip cookie dough and baked cookies.  Kathi, being the smart woman that she is, agreed.

We actually made it to the grocery store without any major detours and bought what we needed.  Once back to our place Kathi made the cookies and hot chocolate and, oh my goodness, did it all taste wonderful!!

Not long after, we decided that it was time to call it a night for we have a pretty full day planned for day 3.  (Involving Taylor Swift, fire on water and puzzle solving).

Girls' Weekend 2018, Rhode Island

Sunrise at Newark airport

Thursday, October 4, 2018

Ahhhhhhh.  Girls' weekend.  My favorite, favorite "weekend" of the year.  (This is in quotation marks because it has now become nearly a week, but we try and keep this on the down low.)  And, another aside, Kathi and I just had a discussion about whether it is really necessary for the apostrophe after the word "girls" when referring to these adventures (this is how nerdy we are).  Conclusion, yes it IS necessary, because it belongs to us, therefore  the possessive form of the plural best describes how we feel about these weekends (oh my god, we are such nerds).

Ok, moving on.  Girls' weekend.  Last year we were in Maine and the toss of the states has brought us to Rhode Island this year.   After doing some research we chose to home base out of Providence rather than Newport for this trip.  We considered making this a 2 state trip but decided there are so many interesting things to do and see in Rhode Island that we would just "do" Rhode Island.  But Rhode Island IS a very small state.  It is 37 miles wide and 48 miles  top to bottom.

So, I began this Girls' weekend by leaving work on Wednesday, October 3 and driving straight up to Portland airport to catch an all night flight to Newark, New Jersey and from there to Providence.  Kathi's adventure began with a 5:17am flight out of Indianapolis to Philadelphia, then on to Providence.  Kathi was up until 1 am finishing up some homework (yes, the crazy woman is BACK in school again, this time in pursuit of her PhD) and packing,  then up at 3 am to make the drive to the airport.  Needless to say we were both a bit sleepy upon arrival.  However, the excitement of Girls' weekend and seeing one another kicked in and we got a second wind when we met up at the airport.

I booked an adorable apartment for us through Air BNB for our stay.  It is in an historic home in a very diverse neighborhood here in Providence.  While our hosts, Desi and Eric, were kind enough to allow us a bit of an early check in, we still had a couple of hours to kill before we could do so, so we found a cute little restaurant, aptly named The Diner (an actual old dining car),  in which to have breakfast.  We ate a wonderful breakfast, drank a lot of coffee and caught up on one anothers' lives.  We paid the bill at 11:57 & drove to our apartment which is only a few minutes away, where we met Desi who gave us the tour and handed us the keys.  This place is amazing, particularly when compared to the place where we stayed last year in Booth Bay Harbor (see blog for last year's trip for a description of our place there).  A FULL apartment, that has a kitchen and everything!!

We settled in and decided to just kind of hang out for the day and maybe catch a nap to make up for the lost sleep of the night before.  Kathi set up her computer and started in on some homework, while I stretched out on one of the two couches in our living room to try and nap.  Once I realized this wasn't going to happen I decided to make a run to the nearest grocery store to get a few staples as well as ingredients to make us dinner.  Desi had told us when giving us the tour that we were welcome to use anything that was in the refrigerator or cupboards and upon finding NINE cans of tuna in the cupboard I decided to make tuna noodle casserole for dinner. (are these people survivalists or something?)   Kathi stayed put to get work done while I ventured out to the nearest grocery store.  Three hours later, I finally arrived back in our apartment with the items on our list.  Holy cow, finding the "nearest" grocery store became an adventure all unto itself!  Kathi had asked Siri to find the nearest grocery store and one called Westminster Food Mart seemed to be the closest.  I could not find it.  Google Maps told me I drove past it twice, but I never saw it.  Now, one thing you need to know is that when looking up grocery stores there were none of that had familiar names.  No Safeways, Krogers that kind of thing.  So, I looked up nearby grocery stores and decided to go to one called Price Right.  Oh my gosh.  Upon walking in I immediately thought I don't know if I'm going to be able to find everything I want here.  Turns out that Price Rights are a kind of discount warehouse grocery store.  The produce section was set up strangely, the aisles were set up strangely and I couldn't find many of the things that were on my list.  For example, I needed cream of celery soup for my tuna noodle casserole and when I arrived in the soup aisle there were not many options in the way of soup and there was NO Campbell's soup at all. WHAT KIND OF GROCERY STORE DOESN"T HAVE CAMPBELL'S SOUP???  Then when I got to the coffee aisle, all they had was Maxwell House and Folgers. 

Since Kathi and I are Starbucks gals,  Maxwell House and Folgers are just not acceptable.  I texted Kathi to relate what I was finding to her and she texted me back to let me know that she happened to be talking with Desi at that moment and Desi said I should go to Stop & Shop instead and provided Kathi with an address which Kathi texted to me.  When I put that address into Google maps, it told me that it was 39 miles away in Hyde Park Massachusetts.  I was pretty sure that wasn't correct.  Ultimately I found it and, YES, this IS the kind of grocery store I am used to.  I was able to complete my shopping here and made my way back to the apartment  where I made successfully made dinner.

We ate, contemplated television shows or a movie to watch.  Watched about 10 minutes of "To All the Boys I've Loved Before", decided it wasn't for us and both started to feel the lack of sleep catch up with us.  We tossed the states and here are the ones remaining in the running for next year. 

Tomorrow our plan is to visit the local zoo and then stay after dark for their Jack O Lantern Spectacular AND ride their Soaring Eagle Zip Line over the giant pumpkins.  I know!!   Sounds like a blast, right?

Did I mention that this is my favorite weekend of the year?