Rhode Island

The view from Marble House- this is the Atlantic Ocean for anyone wondering. 
The real reason I came to Rhode Island (just and FYI I dont actually love Walmart I just like reasonably priced items)
The Elms- one of the Newport Mansions- this home was in full operation (6-8 weeks in the summer) until the late 1960's, the home retained a staff of 42 until the death of the final owner in the late 1960's. 
Downtown Providence- well really this is what is known as college hill- the home of Brown University but it is located next to downtown Providence

The tea house at Marble House- the owner of Marble house decided to build a tea house to host women's suffrage rallies, she even built a river and bridge so that visitors could mentally transition from west to east- she also had special china made that said Vote for Women- she obviously had too much time and too much money

We left the City (yes it is supposed to be capitalized) last weekend and headed off to a place where people are polite, the f word is not used as a place holder, and they have normal stores like Walmart (more about that later), we decided Rhode Island was the place for us. We also wanted to see the Newport mansions (okay that is the real reason that we went) so we took the train from Grand Central to New Haven and rented a car. Newport was beautiful, it is a cute little seaside town that just happens to have huge houses. Newport was the seaside retreat town in the late 1800's and early 1900's and to some extent remains that way today. The Newport mansions were built as summer cottages for the wealthiest americans at the time- cottage is used loosely since most of the homes have 20-70 rooms. Today these houses have been turned into museums, complete with audio tours (they give you a headset and mp3 player and it is self guided). The houses are amazing, really if you have time to go to Newport (those of you on the east coast this summer) I would highly recommend doing it. Oh yes the best part of our trip was going to walmart- okay not really but it was nice to have one stop shopping- since we were moving into our new place the day after we got back we stopped and got a few things, it was well worth carrying them back through the train and subway so we didnt have to go to 40 million stores to get an overpriced version of the same thing.  Newport was great, the people were nice, we didnt have to ride the nasty subway, and there were no rats, all things that we would not have had in NYC.