Our first really nice weather day since the trip began! It started out party cloudy but by mid-day there was not a cloud in the sky and we all thoroughly enjoyed being out in the sunshine. We even got to lounge on the outdoor deck of the ship after we returned from our visit to the town.

Newport:  Elegant homes dot the landscape; big sailing yachts bob in the harbor; private beach clubs with member only signs line the beaches; home of the international tennis hall of fame; and  site of the famous Newport Jazz Festival. This is the playground of the very rich and famous.

Newport was founded in 1639 and currently is home to about 25,000 people. It was and is the summer destination for the rich. It is also the home of the Naval War College, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center and the most elegant college I have ever seen: Salve Regina, a small Catholic school with dormitories housed in a series of former mansions bought by or donated to the university by former owners. John F Kennedy married Jackie Bouvier in Newport. Newport is noted also as the site of past America’s Cup yacht races.

Our trolley bus tour took us past the summer home of President Eisenhower, the family estate of Jackie Kennedy’s family, the mansion being restored by Larry Ellison (Oracle), and the former home of the Vanderbilts, the Breakers. We soon learned that each of the grand homes had a name, not simply an address. Most estates were really hard to see as massive hedges and fences keep them from clear view. Newport truly emerged as the poster boy of the “gilded society” of the early 20th century. As is becoming more common the estates have become costly to maintain and many have been sectioned and sold as elegant condos.

Our tour included a visit to the Breakers where we took the audio tour of the mansion. It is definitely “over the top” in decor and opulence. The mansion is owned by the Preservation Society of Newport County who also owns 5-6 other such mansions which have been restored and are open to the public to visit, at a reasonable price. $35 will get you admission to all of them which seems like a bargain to me. We spent almost 1.5 hours visitng the Breakers before moving on with our touring trolley.

The tour returned us to the ship through the downtown area so we could get a feel for it, as after lunch we rode the ship’s launch to the town pier to do more sightseeing and a bit of shopping.

11,000 steps later we were back on the ship, sitting outside on the aft deck soaking up the sun. It was the first time this trip we were able to do that.

The entertainment this evening was a local trio of women who paid a tribute to the wartime songs that  the Andrew Sisters sang. They were quite good and sounded just like the Andrew Sisters. They did a nice tribute to all the veterans in the crowd by singing all the different service songs (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard).