Vacation Day 7: Newport

People were pretty tired on Thursday morning. Poor Luke's voice was hoarse and his foot had a blister. Even a more relaxed vacation (from my point of view) is still pretty intense for a little kid. We let them sleep as late as they wanted and had a fairly relaxed morning before heading to Newport. Our plan for the day--mansions! We started with the Breakers, the biggest of them all. The gilded age is definitely well-named. The mansion is very impressive. And, definitely over the top. For example, in the "silver room" the walls were actually accented with platinum, because silver needs polishing and platinum will stay shiny forever. Luke and I shared headphones, so I did the kids tour and it was fun. The summer schedule of the Vanderbilt children sounded pretty darn nice: wake up, breakfast, swimming in the ocean, lunch, nap (on clean sheets), horseback riding or tennis lessons, dinner, bed (on clean sheets). They changed clothes at least 4x a day and that combined with all the clean sheets must have made for an insane amount of laundry. But, fortunately, they had 40 servants to take care of them. And, this was just a summer home (I believe they owned several)! The cost of building the mansion was 150M in today's dollars.

Ostentatious, yet beautiful

This, I would love. An amazing view of the ocean from a huge veranda.

We had a light lunch and decided on our next mansion. We chose Rosecliff. It was not as spectacular, but it did have the largest room in Newport. The owner, Tessie, a Nevada silver heiress, built it for entertaining and we heard great stories of lavish parties, not only at Rosecliff but at the neighboring Newport Estates. One funny story talked about a monkey being dressed as a prince and literally swinging from the chandelier and throwing light bulbs at people. Allegedly, that was the straw that broke the money's back and the old money turned their backs on the new money (what else is there to do when you're super rich besides feud with other super rich people?). Tessie fled to Europe for a bit, but then returned to Newport and like others, refused to travel again after the sinking of the Titanic. The elaborate parties continued until she died at 56. The estate went through a couple of owners before the last private owners bought it and used it for 25 years as their summer home. When they died they donated it to the Newport Historical Association. Today, it is used for tours and weddings.

Rosecliff

The largest room in Newport. Built to host parties.

Another grand piano.

Many of us wanted to see more mansions, but unfortunately, Luke was done. D.O.N.E. He was good for Rosecliff because I bribed him with the promise of ice cream, and he is generally agreeable to begin with. But, he couldn't stand the thought of seeing any more buildings. I wanted to do the Cliff Walks, but it was super hot and again, Luke was Done. So, we went back to the house and watched a movie, did laundry and started preparing to get back on the road Friday. We ordered pizza and calzones and it was a peaceful final night in our awesome rental house.

Note made on 6/20/23: see June 2023 for Cooperstown Flashback memory to complete vacation.