Newport, Rhode Island | A classy coastal city with culinary flair
Newport
A classy beach city with a taste for food
You can’t help but notice how beautiful the coastal New England town of Newport is. It has stunning scenery, amazing buildings, and friendly people who make you feel welcome. Newport has a lot of unique places to visit and fun things to do. You can see the Gilded Age houses that the Astors, Rockefellers, and Vanderbilts used as summer homes, or you can go on a culinary and sightseeing tour of Narragansett Bay.
Coastal Style
The Newport area is at the mouth of Narragansett Bay, which National Geographic named one of the Top 12 adventure destinations in the world. It has beaches, fresh seafood, cozy inns and motels, and lots of ways to enjoy the water.
There is a carousel at Easton’s Beach in Newport, which locals call “First Beach.” Sachuest Beach, also known as “Second Beach,” in Middletown is a great place to surf. It is right next to the Norman Bird Sanctuary. You can take a walk along the 5.6-kilometer Cliff Walk to see the houses and the rocky coast. You can take a Newport Gourmet Tour to learn more about food behind the scenes, or you can go to the Coastal Extreme Brewing Company/Newport Storm Brewery to try some of their beers and rum.
Then, go to your room at the downtown Admiral Fitzroy Inn, which used to be a nun and is now a bed and breakfast; Forty 1° North, which has modern amenities; or the Castle Hill Inn, which has Old World charm.
Headquarters for Sailing
The city is known as the “Sailing Capital of the World” because it is home to the America’s Cup and the U.S. Naval Station Newport. On Narragansett Bay, trips called “Sight-Sailing” are very popular. You can take trips on a lobster boat that has been fixed up or a yacht that used to be used for rum smuggling.
If you’d rather learn how to sail, Sail Newport’s adult program offers both one-on-one and group lessons. Other sailing lessons can be tailored to the needs of kids and teens.
One fun thing to do in the area is to take a kayak and watch the boats in Newport Harbor sail under the Claiborne Pell Bridge, also known as the Newport Bridge.
Story of the Gilded Age
Newport’s rocky shores and sandy beaches made it “America’s First Resort” from 1870 to 1900, during the “Gilded Age.” You can take tours of 11 homes and gardens today. Seven of them are National Historic Landmarks.
As far as “summer cottages” go, The Breakers, the Vanderbilt family’s 70-room palazzo in the Italian Renaissance style, is the most impressive. Marie Antoinette’s Petit Trianon in Versailles gave Vanderbilt ideas for another home, Marble House.
The Elms looks like a French chateau from the 1750s. Rosecliff looks a lot like the Grand Trianon, which was the garden home of the French kings at Versailles. Here’s where the American Beauty Rose got its start.
Beyond Newport, Newport is a hub for experiencing Rhode Island’s 644 kilometers of coastline, its beautiful rural areas with tours of farms and vineyards, horseback riding and hiking, and Providence, the state capital.
Barnaby Evans made “WaterFire,” a sculpture with 100 fires just above the water’s surface that can be seen in rivers in downtown Providence and towns all over the world. Make plans to eat here: It was chosen by Travel + Leisure as the best food city in the United States.
A ferry ride to Block Island, which is about 21 kilometers south of Newport, will let you see one of the “Last Great Places on Earth” according to the Nature Conservancy. The island has rare wildlife, trails, and a rocky shoreline.