Quick NECA Cruise Update 03 — Newport, RI

We had visited Newport a few years ago when I attended the Viable Paradise writing workshop. Again, I ain’t even gonna try linking the related posts.

That had been a fairly quick tour of the place. We had walked around a bit, ate some food here . . .

and walked around a bit more. Some might remember this photo:

This version is a bit better because the Note 8 is a better camera . . . er, phone . . . er, camera phone, and because I took better care in snapping the photo.

We hadn’t planned on getting off-ship because it involved a twenty-minutes tender. But, relaxing our resolve, we braved the calm ocean and gregarious passengers and ventured ashore.

We’re mindful to avoid crowded venues or be too friendly because many people cough, sneeze, or otherwise happily spread their filthy germs around.

It would be nice to come back from one of these trips without also carrying some sort of bug home with us. But, even as careful as we are, we seem to attract people who just love to talk to our faces. Plus, of course, there’s the disease carrying crowd that travels in planes and lives for the chance of spreading their germs to a captive audience.

But, that’s a rant for another time. This rant is about being packed like sardines into a lifeboat (standard procedure for tenders). Okay, I’ll forego the rant.

Once ashore, we walked a bit more than 2.5 miles. We went all the way to a little park I had seen on the map. It has a statue of a French general who helped us during our little fray with them British folks back in the day. When I’m back home and doing a proper update (sometime in the next few years) I’ll probably provide his name and more information.

He’s pointing at something . . .

Ah, he knows our ship!

Er . . . No; he must be looking at some other interesting harbor sight.

Speaking of sights, there were a few (three) of these ex-trees clustered in one area . . .

I found it a bit odd . . . why would anyone deliberately poison just these trees out of a mile-long line of similar trees?

It only took me a few moments of looking around to get my answer.

I mean, I don’t know for sure but, you see, if you build multi-million dollars homes, you probably don’t take too kindly to arboreal obstructions to your view of the bay. Those homes, by fortuitous coincidence, benefited greatly from the poisoning of the trees.

Go figure.

Now, if I were the mayor of the place, I’d put up huge billboards extolling the history of the place . . . and completely obliterate any chance of seeing the bay from those houses. But, that’s just me.

Perhaps it wasn’t the owners or their agents; perhaps it was the builder(s). You can charge more of you can offer up a place with a view.

Newport is a neat little town and there’s history here. History we didn’t bother with. There’s an historical mansions tour we didn’t bother with (we had hit a few on our last visit). There are museums and other stuff we also didn’t bother with.

What can I say; we travel by the beat of a different drummer . . . plus, I’m half-deaf and I probably miss half the beats anyway.

On the other hand, I kept my eye out for odd stuff to photograph . . .

I had mentioned the place had been socked in by fog and it took a while for the fog to clear . . . and then come back . . . and then partially clear and then come back.

It turns out the bay we were anchored in — and the surrounding scenery — are quite nice.

Eventually, the fog left for a goodly amount of time and I got me some photos while walking around the deck.

Later that evening (the evening of the formal) we sat in the Piazza, sipping coffee, and watching the guys prepare the glasses for the champagne fountain.

Here’s the interesting thing . . . all of the glasses get handled by the persons and then the glasses on the periphery of the pyramid each get a grape placed in them . . . by hand. Ungloved hands.

I mean, they do this a lot and no one has died — that I know of — but, still, I wouldn’t exactly be thrilled drinking from those glasses. Maybe it’s just for the visual and no one actually drinks from them.

I mean, it’s not like I hung around waiting to see how things turned out.

For one, people in suits and fancy dresses make me nervous (I keep checking my pockets to make sure nothing’s been taken) and, for another, I don’t want to ruin their evening by having an unshaven bloke in Hang Ten shorts and a t-shirt loitering about.

Nope. We went up to the buffet where I had me a couple of crepes; one with plain sugar and one with Nutella.

A good time was had by all.

Here’s a gallery of all the photos. You can also click on the individual photos for a larger version (it will open in a new window or tab . . . provided the app doesn’t screw things up).

That’s it. This post has ended . . . except for the stuff below.

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