Fun with Family.

This week we’ve continued to have lots of adventures with visitors. On Friday we collected Grandma from the airport and all went to Providence. We found a great restaurant in the Italian district for dinner which had a train running round the ceiling! 

Then we had our first real live experience of American sport. We went to watch the Providence Bruins Ice Hockey team play the Bridgeport Tigers! Ice hockey is 1 of those sports which is a lot better live. The puck moves so fast that it’s incredibly difficult to film, so it’s much easier to follow the action in the stadium, and then you add the atmosphere. It was a fantastic evening out! 

Saturday was bright but very breezy. We had been saving a visit to Fort Adams State Park until people came to visit. The park is home to Fort Adams, one of the largest coastal fortifications in North America, active from 1841 through the first half of the 20th century. It is similar in many ways to Fort Brockhurst and the many other fortifications which run along the coast of Portsmouth and Gosport. The boys especially enjoyed exploring the listening tunnels. 

Sunday was sadly the day we had to take Auntie Libby and Uncle Rusty back to Boston to catch their plane. But while we were driving to Boston we decided to take the opportunity to visit the city. It is full of history. Boston is 1 of the oldest cities in America, founded in 1630. It is the site of many key events in the American Wars of Independence, or the Revolutionary Wars as they are known here. We chose a lovely day to walk the Freedom Trail which links many of the key historical sites in the city. We will definitely need to visit again to see the museums and the sites in more detail, but we had a good overview of a fascinating city. 

This week we’ve shown Grandma some of our favourite places closer to home. We visited Sachuest Point and Eastons Beach. We went back to Rome Point and spent several lovely hours watching the seals and exploring the beach. The weather had been beautiful this week and we’re all developing our sun tans!! 

On Thursday we visited The Breakers, the biggest and most elaborate of Newport’s mansions, summer home of the Vanderbilt family. Built in an Italian Renaissance style with 70 rooms on 5 floors, the house took merely 2 years to build, completed in 1895. 

That evening we went to a local elementary school where Newport FILM were screening a beautiful documentary called Given, the story of a family traveling the world, told through the eyes of a 6 year old boy. The boys were captivated. I guess they could relate to it pretty well. Timmy declared it to be his favourite film ever!! It’s definitely not helped our itchy feet!! 

Today we found a new exciting place to visit. The Great Swamp, RI, was the site of a crucial battle in King Philip’s war between colonial militia and the Narragansett tribe. Today it is a wildlife reservation and Rhode Island’s largest wetlands preserve. We had a wonderful 4 mile walk in the sunshine. We spent a while watch Osprey hunt, and probably feed their young in nests they had made on special platforms over the swamp. We also saw an Eastern Ribbon snake, cormorants, a white heron, little turtles, lots of butterflies and bees, and a group of what we think may have been turkey vultures. 

It’s going to be sad to say goodbye to Grandma, but we’re already planning her next visit, and we’re looking forward to lots more visitors over the coming months. 😊