Spur of the moment - Part 1

It will come as no surprise to anybody that I am not an impromptu gal. So I nearly gave Rick a heart attack a couple of weeks ago when I called him at work on Friday afternoon with a plan to go away for the weekend. I had already researched all the hotel deals we could get within a 3 hour drive of home and we just needed to choose a destination. We decided to head towards Rhode Island simply because we hadn't been there yet. I got a great deal on hotwire.com - we ended up at a Holiday Inn Express where we basically stayed for 2 nights what you normally pay for one. So, off we went cruising down the Massachusetts Turnpike...

Friday night we just hung out at the hotel. Alexis swam in the pool and we ordered in the best pizza (Pizza 85) we have ever had! On Saturday we headed into Providence, RI to check it out. We spent the morning driving through the city and looking at the different architecture there. We loved the view of the Capitol building and the old houses on Benefit Street just a couple of blocks away from Brown University. Benefit Street is a mile long street set up on a hill that came to be in the late 1700's as Providence's ascendant merchant class built fancy houses overlooking the city. The years that the houses were built and who owned them are on a placard on the corner of each house. Today, most of them are owned by ordinary people and some even had For Rent signs in the window. Here are some pictures of this leg of our adventure.....

Our little tourist and her friend Chocolate

at the Rogers Williams Memorial Park Visitor Center

The view of the Capitol Building from the visitors center

A look down Benefit Street

A close up of the placard that labels the homes

Another house - I like this one because if you look through

the upstairs middle window, it looks like there is a staircase blocking the window.

And yet another house...

There were several trees along the street where

the roots were attacking the sidewalk

An old church by the park

An interesting building in downtown Providence.

Count how many of the windows actually have glass in them.

Stay tuned to hear about the next leg of our little trip....