Providence
Providence: Day Three
After breakfast at our hotel, we toured the State House. The construction of this historic and architectural milestone began in 1895 and completed nine years later in 1904: at the cost then of $3 million. The 50-foot, self-supporting dome invited us to stare upwards at its magnificence. This building was a labor of love and a testament to the institution it would house; today's buildings seem to focus on functionality and cost efficiency. The exterior of the building is marble, as well as most of the inside floors, staircases, etc., all coming from the same quarry in Georgia.
The desks and lamps are all original in the Senate and the House of Representatives. Here you can also see the original charter from 1663, encased in glass, giving Rhode Island the right to practice any religion. Additionally, one can see an original painting of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart, the same portrait seen on the dollar bill. On our tour we saw the State Library with its floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and the original spiral staircase. Inside the library is the oldest book in their collection, the minutes of a town hall meeting from 1750. Our tour guide pointed out that though it's the smallest state, Rhode Island has a rich and treasured history.
We ate lunch at the Union Street Brewery, which is inside Providence's old train station. Here the atmosphere was lively, as is the case in most pubs. The walls are bricked with leather-lined booths along the walls, and the in-house brewery could be seen behind the glass-walled bar area. The menu was basically appetizers, burgers and sandwiches, but a fun thing on the menu was the beer sampler. It included five-ounce portions of all five beers they make on the premises. We did our own taste test and Oktoberfest was the winner. I don't even like beer, but it was fun to try them all and to hear everyone's remarks.
It was time to head home from Providence and, like the beer; I felt that we only experienced a sampling of what the city had to offer. Money magazine voted Providence as one of the best places to live two years in a row, and if our roots and our families were not in New York, I might consider such a move. It's a beautiful city with many unique neighborhoods and a wealth of history and cultural events.
And we even got to visit my niece at Johnson and Wales University. We found out she got a tattoo of a dragonfly