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).