New England in the Fall

It's hard to believe what a year of travel we've had! We just recently got back from Boston, MA, and Newport, RI, for a wedding of an old buddy of Christian's, Tim Leukens, from Tulsa. He went to Plymouth State and ended up settling there and finding a Rhode-Islander to marry. He asked Christian to be in the wedding and before we knew it, we were off to New England for the fall.

We flew into Boston Friday, Oct. 8, and rented a car ready to move the journey onward. While making the beautiful autumn-night trek to Newport (only about 1.5 hours away) we listened to the Presidential debate on the radio and kept our eyes peeled for our correct exits. We made it to Newport and checked into The Newport Inn & Spa. So, once we got there we found out it's like, holiday weekend, and one of the last sailing weekends of the year so all the hotels were packed out. All we knew was that, we never found the "spa" part of our hotel and it wasn't so much an Inn as it was a Ramada. What it was, was one of the cheapest hotels we found online and it did us just right.

Saturday we did the rehearsal stuff and had Saturday afternoon and evening to do whatever we wanted. We went to see the famous mansions of Newport that were centuries old and unbelievable. We then headed out to check out the downtown scene and it was a really nice downtown with cobblestone streets, tall brownstone buildings and shops side-by-side lined the area and gave it a sort of, Old World feel. We enjoyed ourselves and watching others get busted by cops and their heads slammed against cop cars for kicking an orange 'work ahead' sign over in a state of inebriation.

What? Like ... straight out of COPS. The cops just made the dude feel sorry for ever being alive. It was great...until we realized that the po po were taking it too far. Everyone was yelling at the police and saying, "Everyone's watching you and you have witnesses, buddy." (All in the Bostonian accent you can imagine in your head.) It was nuts. Lots-o-action in Newport.

On Sunday, the wedding was a traditional Northern wedding where people tap their glasses and every time they do that, the newlyweds have to kiss at the head table. They had cocktail hour for like, two hours and everyone was blitz by the time we got out on the dance floor. So, I got my first official (pregnant) dance with my son in at Newport, RI. Oh ... why is it always so fun to watch total strangers make silly of themselves?

It was definitely another world, this kind of wedding. Sailboats were everywhere and we ate swordfish and clanged our glasses with strangers. All-in-all, Newport was fun. I'm glad we got to have this, possibly last get-a-way before Peanut comes.

One more experience to check of the list; see New England in the Fall. Check!

Outtie...Milton