I’m taking a girl trip later this month to New England with my daughter Deb and our friend Dawn and there will be a post or so about it… but in the meantime I want to re-post part of a trip Deb and I made 20 years ago to Newport, Rhode Island.
We had spent the earlier part of the week on Martha’s Vineyard but that’s a re-post for a later date. We left the Vineyard and headed for an over night stay in Newport, Rhode Island, a place Deb had never been to and I raved about.
I had made reservations at a bed & breakfast, which is NOT pictured here… this is the beautiful Rosecliff mansion.
We figured we’d check in and then go have lunch by the harbor. The best laid plans often go astray as we were finding out
We pulled into the circular driveway of what once had been a gorgeous mansion. The operative word here is… once. The first thing we noticed was the roof being torn off and being tossed onto the driveway. OK, a little renovation is a good thing.
There were no other cars in the driveway (an omen perhaps).
There were spider webs by the front door, not such a good thing, even if Halloween was only days away.
The door was bolted so we rang the bell.
Lurch opened it. All right, it wasn’t Lurch, but this man was big and wore an eye patch and had a low gravely, grumbly voice. OK, maybe there wasn’t an eye patch but there should have been.
We entered with trepidation what at one time years ago had been a beautiful mansion but was now drab, threadbare, and frankly creepy. The beautifully carved wood circular staircase was covered by the most horrible ugly green carpeting imaginable. We signed in and were lead upstairs to our room (cue ominous music). I think on the way up we were warned told not to ever venture into the east wing ! Or maybe that was from ‘Beauty and the Beast’… at any rate I remember hearing some words of caution, or welcome, or whatever.
Walked into the room… it was large, there was a queen size bed, also a cot, the floors were bare, nothing matched, everything was worn out looking, it was dusty and unwelcoming, there was also the constant banging on the roof, or was it coming from the closet !
I didn’t want to put my suitcase down, I paced nervously around clutching my bags. Deb looked at me and I at her mumbling things like “I don’t know about this” “I don’t like it here” “this is spooky”. She asked if I wanted to go home? I nodded.
We made a beeline down the stairs, mumbled a few words to the owner, flung open the seemingly stuck front doors, threw our luggage in the car and high tailed it out of there.
We did however have one of the best lunches ever. We drove to the harbor and ate outside at the Mooring. The whole time we were eating we were laughing and talking about the weird B&B and the seemingly spooky owners. Our waitress came over to ask the usual “how is everything” question and before I knew it I was telling her about our … um, episode at the B&B. She told us she’d heard some weird stories about the place. We agreed we’d definitely made the right decision in leaving.
We left Newport with 3 minutes to spare on the parking meter and headed home to NJ. This trip was one for the books.
Wonder what our upcoming girl trip will bring in the way of adventure.. perhaps a visit to the past !!!
The train stopped at what is now the staging area for cars waiting to get onto the ferries. The tracks ran under the overpass in the left corner of the photograph below. It was literally only steps from boat to train. Train service ended in the 1960’s.
The Elms
