Frommer’s EasyGuide to Rhode Island

Frommer’s Star Ratings System

Every hotel, restaurant, and attraction listed in this guide has been ranked for quality and value. Here’s what the stars mean:

AN IMPORTANT NOTE

The world is a dynamic place. Hotels change ownership, restaurants hike their prices, museums alter their opening hours, and buses and trains change their routings. And all of this can occur in the several months after our authors have visited, inspected, and written about, these hotels, restaurants, museums, and transportation services. Though we have made valiant efforts to keep all our information fresh and up-to-date, some few changes can inevitably occur in the periods before a revised edition of this guidebook is published. So please bear with us if a tiny number of the details in this book have changed. Please also note that we have no responsibility or liability for any inaccuracy or errors or omissions, or for inconvenience, loss, damage, or expenses suffered by anyone as a result of assertions in this guide.

On the western bluffs of Newport, Rhode Island, Castle Hill Lighthouse guards the entrance to Narragansett Bay.

CONTENTS

About the Authors

1Rhode Island

Providence

Bristol

Newport

The Rhode Island Coast

Block Island

2New England in Context

3Planning Your Trip to New England

Ready for an Atlantic sunrise over Tenants Harbor, Maine.

ABOUT THE AUTHORs

Kim Knox Beckius is a Connecticut-based travel writer who has hugged a baby moose, tasted 38 different whoopie pies in one sitting, and sent hundreds of free fall leaves in the mail to autumn lovers around the world. She is a Yankee Magazine Contributing Editor, owner of EverythingNewEngland.com, New England Expert for TripSavvy.com (formerly About.com) and the author of seven books including Backroads of New England and New England’s Historic Homes & Gardens. She lives in the Hartford area.

Leslie Brokaw has worked on more than a dozen Frommer’s Guides to Québec and New England. She is an editor for MIT Sloan Management Review and teaches at Emerson College. She and her family live outside of Boston.

Brian Kevin is the editor in chief of Down East magazine and has written for Outside, Travel + Leisure, The New York Times, Audubon and other magazines. His work has been recognized or anthologized in Best Food Writing, Best American Essays and Best American Sports Writing and he’s the author of The Footloose American: Following the Hunter S. Thompson Trail Across South America. He lives in Hope, Maine.

Herbert Bailey Livesey has written about food and travel for over 40 years, authoring or contributing to Frommer’s Montreal & Quebec City, Frommer’s Europe, and Frommer’s New England. In addition, he wrote and revised five guidebooks in the earlier American Express series, which were translated into 11 languages. Scores of his articles have been published in Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine, Playboy, New York, and Yankee.

Laura Reckford has been exploring and writing about Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, as well as other parts of New England, for more than 20 years. She is the founder and CEO of Cape Cod Wave, an online magazine covering the culture and character of Cape Cod. She is also the executive director of the Falmouth Art Center. She resides in Falmouth, MA.

Barbara Radcliffe Rogers is co-author of seven guidebooks to Italy, three to Spain, and several others covering Europe, Atlantic Canada, and New England. She writes regularly for Global Traveler Magazine and other magazines, newspapers, and websites. Her taste for travel began when she moved to Verona, Italy, soon after graduating from Boston University, and she has since visited every country in Western Europe, and much of Eastern Europe and Latin America. Barbara currently lives in New Hampshire. Wherever she is, she’s likely to be skiing in the winter and kayaking in the summer and discovering new flavors for her blog, Worldbite.

Award-winning travel writer Bill Scheller is a 30-year Vermont resident. His books include America: A History in Art; Colonial New England on Five Shillings a Day; and, with his wife Kay, Best Vermont Drives. Among his more than 300 published articles are numerous features in Yankee magazine on his adopted state. He lives in Randolph, Vermont.

Stillman Rogers is a travel writer and photographer, co-author of guidebooks to Portugal, Italy, and Spain’s Canary Islands, as well as the eastern U.S. and Canada. His photographs have been published in books, magazines, and regularly on Global Traveler’s family travel website, WhereverFamily. He writes about destinations and skiing and has a monthly newspaper travel column. His first foreign travel was after graduating from Harvard, when he was stationed in Italy for 3 years; Italy still remains one of his favorite subjects for photography.

Erin Trahan is an arts journalist who specializes in film, TV, and travel. She is a regular contributor to WBUR, Boston’s NPR news station, and she teaches at Emerson College. She has written extensively for Frommer’s Travel Guides. Erin lives in Marblehead, MA.

1

Rhode Island

By Barbara Radcliffe Rogers & Stillman Rogers

Water defines Little Rhody as much as mountain peaks characterize Colorado. The Atlantic Ocean borders its southeastern side, not in one smooth coastline but in a delightfully ragged, sea-fringed edge of islands, inlets, and the large basin that is Narragansett Bay. Indeed, while this tiny state measures only 37 miles east to west—you can easily drive from end to end in under an hour—within those 37 miles Rhode Island tucks in some 400 miles of seacoast. No wonder its official nickname is the Ocean State!

At the northern point of Narragansett Bay, 30 miles from the open ocean, lies Providence, the state capital, founded in 1636 by theologian Roger Williams. A couple of years later, another group of Puritan exiles established a settlement on an island in the Narragansett Bay known to the Narragansett tribe as Aquidneck. Settlers thought their new home resembled the Isle of Rhodes in the Aegean, so the region’s name became Rhode Island and Providence Plantations—a title that eventually came to be used for the entire state.

Rhode Island’s most important coastal town, Newport, is the best reason for an extended visit here. Newport’s first era of prosperity was during the Colonial period, when its ships plied new mercantile routes to China. The city also was central to the reprehensible Triangle Trade of rum from New England, molasses from the West Indies, and enslaved peoples from Africa. Smuggling and evading taxes brought the ship owners into conflict with their British rulers and the occupying British army all but destroyed Newport during the American Revolution. About a hundred years later, after the U.S. Civil War, the town began its transformation to luxury resort. Millionaires arrived and built astonishingly extravagant mansions, dubbed their summer cottages. (Their lives spawned what authors Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner sneeringly described as the Gilded Age in their 1873 novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today.) Those mansions remain intact, and many are open to visitors. Newport also became a yachting destination: Sailing’s most famous trophy, the America’s Cup, was moved to the city in 1930 and Newport continues to be a recreational sailing center with a packed summer cultural calendar. The result is a city with a little of everything: Visitors who want nothing more than to listen to the surf can happily coexist with history buffs.

Rhode Island

Finally, there is Block Island. Beloved by both year-round residents and vacationers, it’s a 1-hour ferry ride from the southern coast of the state. It’s a quieter and less chic summer destination than Martha’s Vineyard (p. 266), the Massachusetts island about 50 miles to its east. The Block has few mandatory sights, leaving visitors free simply to explore its lighthouses, hike its cliffside trails, and hit the beach.

Providence Red-Star2_redstar2.jpg

50 miles S of Boston, MA; 57 miles NE of New London, CT

From a neglected, run-down industrial has-been in the 1970s, Providence has re-created itself into a thriving, lively arts and creative center, alive with an energy that sets it apart from other small and midsize New England cities. Rivers have been uncovered to form canals and waterside walkways (and host a popular summer event called WaterFire); distressed buildings from the 1800s have been reclaimed and made into residences and office spaces; and construction has wrought new hotels and large public/private partnerships such as Providence Place, a mega-mall opened in 1999 that brought national department stores here for the first time.

Prosperity is evident in the resurgent Downcity business center and emerging adjacent neighborhoods, the Arts & Entertainment District to its west and Jewelry District to its south. Also on the rise is the West Side, a former industrial enclave adjoining Federal Hill, the city’s traditional Little Italy. All this new energy has attracted creative young people and restaurants, shops, bars, and entertainments they crave. A current key initiative, City Walk, is part of an Urban Trail plan that will strengthen the connections between neighborhoods, celebrating their diversity and culture through public art, signage and attractive public spaces.

The key historic figure of the region is Roger Williams (1603–83), a theologian who established a colony in Providence in 1636 after being banned from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his views on religious freedom. Williams had good instincts for town building. He planted the seeds of his settlement on a steep rise overlooking a swift-flowing river at the point where it widened into a large protected harbor. That part of the city, called the East Side and dominated by the ridge now known as College Hill, is one of the most attractive city districts in New England, second only to Boston in the breadth of its cultural life and rich architectural heritage.

Essentials

Arriving

BY CAR   I-95, which connects Boston and New York, runs right through the city. Going to or from Cape Cod, pick up I-195 West.

Providence

BY TRAIN   Amtrak (www.amtrak.com; Black-Phone_bphone.jpg

800/USA-RAIL

[872-7245]) runs several trains daily between Boston and New York that stop at the attractive station at 100 Gaspee St., near the State House. The train journey from Boston takes anywhere from 35 minutes to 1 hour, depending on how many stops the train makes; tickets cost $12 and up. The trip from New York takes 3 or 3½ hours, with fares $50 and up.

BY PLANE   T. F. Green/Providence Airport (www.pvdairport.com; Black-Phone_bphone.jpg

401/737-8222

or 401/691-2000) in Warwick, south of Providence (I-95, exit 13), handles domestic and international flights into the state. Most major U.S. airlines fly here, along with Air Canada (www.aircanada.com), and the European carriers Azores Airlines (www.azoresairlines.pt), and low-cost Norwegian Airlines (www.norwegian.com).

Between the Airport & the City Center

The Rhode Island Public Transit Authority, or RIPTA (www.ripta.com; Black-Phone_bphone.jpg

800/244-0444

or 401/781-9400), provides transportation between the airport and the city center. Taxis are also available, about $30 to $35 for the 20-minute trip; shared shuttle van rides cost $11.

Visitor Information

The Providence Warwick Convention & Visitors Bureau runs an information center in the Rhode Island Convention Center, 1 Sabin St. (www.goprovidence.com; Black-Phone_bphone.jpg

800/233-1636

or 401/751-1177). Their website is full of good information, too, and you can request a visitors’ guide booklet to be mailed to you in advance. The center is open Monday through Saturday from 9am to 5pm.

City Layout

Downcity is the center for business, government, and entertainment, with City Hall, the convention center, the best large hotels, and venues for music, dance, and theatrical productions. Most points of general interest are found in the East Side and College Hill, which lie—as their names