Today we celebrated Ana’s birthday…. an important one but I will stick to the etiquette and only mention that it was over 28. We got up pretty early and got the kids ready. Our cleaning crew came in early and we took off to have a relaxing breakfast at the ‘newly’ discovered bakery. It is not necessarily the best one we know, but the area with the tables is really comfortable. From there we took off and drove all the way down to Newport. We just followed our usual interstate 95 and it lead us to Rhode Island. With little problems we went on to interstate 195 and crossed over Mount-Hope bridge. The bridge with quite some mist looked spectacular which Markus commented with ‘Mommy it is dusty today’.
We stopped at Easton beach and walked along the beach at a temperature of about 12 C and little wind. The swell was good and we even had the pleasure to watch two surfers doing there tricks on the waves. The water was of course pretty cold which did not stop Gisele, Markus and Ivan to ask for their swim suits. After some explanation they gave in and we had a good walk along the beach collecting beautiful stones and quite large and nice shells, which reminds me that I still have to take them out of the back of the car before they develop too much of an odor.
We also visited the playground, where Ivan took care of Blake as a perfect version of the older brother. They took all the slides and Blaki enjoyed himself and did not cry once. Meanwhile Ana and myself sat on a bench and stared at the sea, the surfers and were imagining how our summer would go if we stayed in the Boston area. We have not decided yet where the summer will take us, will it be Geneva, or rather the New England area.
We drove through parts of Newport and parked the car near the long wharf and walked down what in the summer must be a bustling street, but with the weather and the time of the year it was rather quiet. At least we did not have to pay the parking meter, which is switched off until the end of April. We took an all American lunch (hotdogs, hamburgers and Belgian waffles) in the Ocean Cafe and decided that we should take the ocean drive to watch the heavily advertised mansions. I had read about Newport and the mansions, which the fine New York upper crust built in the last centuries and even expecting great houses we were very impressed with the beautiful mansions in perfect landscape. In fact many of the houses were not small but rather big palaces and we imagined together what we could afford after having won a big lottery ticket :-). We decided most of the houses were way too big and we would under these circumstances settle for quite small and modest places. For anyone who has not been there, we can recommend this trip. The places are stunning and some of them are even open for visits. As it says in Edward Rutherfurd’s Novel ‘New York’: ‘Once one belonged in Newport society, one had reached the top.’
On our way home I took interstate 495 and Ana only realized it when we had already arrived at our favourite furniture store ‘Hardware Restoration’. Again it proved that I am lucky and they just on that day had received one of the Mayflower cubes which we had eyed for our night stands. This saved my day because this night stand at a great price made a wonderful birthday present for Ana. We hurried home, setup the night stand and I did some overdue reshuffling of my office. The kids went to bed smoothly and Ana and I enjoyed the rest of the day and night in harmony….