4 Easy Breezy Beautiful Days in Newport, Rhode Island

WHY VISIT NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND?
Newport is a bougie little coastal town with a bougie past. The Vanderbilt family built mansions and John F. Kennedy was married to Jacqueline Bouvier at St. Mary’s Church! Rhode Island was never really on my radar as a vacation destination until I started to see Instagram influencers travel to the little coastal town of Newport. It looked really cute and pretty, so when my family found out all the resorts in Florida and the Carolinas were booked this summer, I suggested Newport, and my parents said ok. This also turned into a good decision for summer 2021 because COVID-19 cases there were very low and most shops and restaurants were open and operating.

WHEN TO GO
Newport is definitely a summer getaway town, and it wasn’t crazy crowded in late July, but I do think it would be better to go in May or September.  Temperature-wise, it was humid and in the 70s or 80s every day. It was breezy at night, so definitely pack a sweater!

GETTING THERE
If you’re flying from Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, or probably anywhere on the West Coast, there are no direct flights to Rhode Island. The state’s biggest airport is T.F. Green Airport in Warwick. The easiest option for us was to fly nonstop to Boston, rent a car, and drive 71 miles south to Newport.

WHERE TO STAY
Newport is a very small town, and there are plenty of little hotels and inns. If you don’t plan on renting a car, then I would recommend staying in town by the water.  This will be more expensive, but you won’t have to deal with parking, which can be a little difficult if you come during peak summer tourist season like we did. The main food and shopping areas are Broadway, Thames Street, America’s Cup Ave, and Bellevue Ave, so anywhere near there is ideal.

Since we did have a car, we stayed at the Hampton Inn & Suites Newport/Middletown, about 2 miles north of the main downtown.

PARKING
It was crowded this summer, but we never spent more than 5 minutes looking for parking, most of which were public metered spots. On Thames Street, the main street in town, you can only park in a spot for three hours. All the spots work with a mobile app if you don’t want to keep pulling your credit card out.

WHAT TO EAT
Lots of seafood! I’m not sure if it’s normal or if it was pandemic-related, but some popular restaurants were closed on Sundays and Mondays, and even some Tuesdays. I mention each restaurant we ate at below, but check out this separate blog post on my favorite restaurants in Newport, Rhode Island.

4 DAYS IN NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND
July 25-29, 2021

DAY 1 – SUNDAY

We took an early morning flight out of Seattle and met up with my sister at Logan International Airport in Boston around 4pm East Coast time.  We got our rental car at the airport and hit the road.  The drive to Newport was a little over an hour. Along the freeway, it was pretty and green.

After checking into our hotel, we drove into town to eat dinner at Binge BBQ, only to discover that they were closed on Sundays ☹. This unfortunately became a trend throughout both Rhode Island and Maine.

I was getting hangry, so we ended up going to a restaurant up the street, and it was a great decision! Malt on Broadway had soo many delicious items on the menu! The best bite of the night was the Thai shrimp nachos. They were pretty small, so I’d recommend getting two orders for four people, you won’t regret it!! This was a great start to our trip of constant eating and we went to bed with full bellies.

DAY 2 – MONDAY

We started our day trying to go to Drift Café for breakfast only to discover, you guessed it, it was closed. We saw several other families walk to the door and turn back, disappointed, so I felt less bad. We ended up grabbing coffee at Starbucks and shopping for sweatshirts in the tourist shops.

We started at the North end of Thames Street, which is actually a very long road and continues across America’s Cup Ave. There are a few more t-shirt shops along the water. Sephora, Lululemon, and Athleta are behind Thames Street along the Long Wharf Mall.

We had a reservation for noon at Midtown Oyster Bar (you probably don’t need one for lunch), which was a large restaurant by the water. We were seated upstairs in the flag room which was super cool with the wooden beams and high ceilings. Of course, we had to try the oysters. My sister and I hadn’t eaten them before, and so we dressed them with lemon and sauce. They were cold and a little chewy. Not bad, but not my favorite.

For the afternoon, we drove 25 minutes west to another beach town called Narragansett (pronounced Nare-uh-ganset). We parked near the Narragansett Towers and then walked to the beach. It was super crowded with families, and cars were parked down the side of the road for a mile. There were only a handful of shops and cafes off of Kingstown Road behind a hotel, so you only need to go there if you’re going to the beach.

We drove a little bit further west along the coast to the lighthouse at Point Judith. The lighthouse was blocked by a big fence and wasn’t worth taking photos of, but the view from Rose Nulman Park was pretty and a bunch of people were sitting in lawn chairs and just looking at the view.

Next, we drove back to the west side of Newport to get drinks at The Lawn at the Castle Hill Inn. The iconic white Adirondack chairs are open on a first-come, first-serve basis and then you can order drinks at the little bar at the bottom of the hill. I got a blueberry lemonade and the rest of my family got actual alcohol. The view is beautiful, but was super windy, which made it a bit difficult to get photos. Also, beware of goose poop.

From the lawn, we could see part of the Castle Hill Lighthouse. The valet guy said there was a trail that started at the far end of the parking lot. We followed the short path (like 5mins) right down to the lighthouse, and we only saw like 4 other people, which was nice!

We drove to Bellevue Ave and had extra time to kill before our dinner reservation, so we walked around the shops and Touro Park, where we found the Newport Tower. The structure was built in the 17^th century, but some have speculated that it was built before Christopher Columbus came to the Americas.

We did the prix fixe menu at Jo’s American Bistro, which was great! This restaurant had my favorite desserts of the trip: an olive oil cake with fruit and peach bread pudding.

DAY 3 – TUESDAY

We had passed by Simple Merchant Coffee on the way to town the first day, so this time my family stopped for coffee. It’s on the first level of a building that used to be a school. It’s on the road on the way to downtown and not near any other shops, so it’s not crowded.

Next was my favorite part of Newport, Cliff Walk, which is a 3.5-mile trail along the water on the East part of Newport. We parked at Forty Steps (put it into Google Maps) and only had an hour and a half to walk to The Marble House and back, which was around 2.6 miles. At 9:30am it was already hot and humid, so we were very sweaty. There were a lot of people on the walk, which was mostly all paved concrete, except for one part where you have to walk on big boulders by the ocean.  It wasn’t too tough, but I wouldn’t cross it in the rain when it could be slippery.

For brunch, we headed back to Thames Street and got brunch at Drift Café since we didn’t go the day before. It’s a trendy, tiny café that’s known for smoothies and smoothie bowls, but they serve some normal food as well. The smoothies and bowls were refreshing, and the portion sizes were big. After, we had a little bit of time before our 12:30pm boat tour around the harbor, so we walked around the wharf.

We purchased tickets for a boat tour of Newport Harbor with Gansett Cruises online on Sunday night, but you can also book them in person at the little booth on the waterfront. Whatever way you choose, I would recommend booking a few days in advance because they do sell out in the summer. It was $28 per person (and more expensive on weekends), and there were several tour times to choose from throughout the day. The morning cruise includes a mimosa, and our afternoon cruise included a cup of Del’s frozen lemonade or a “mudslide,” which tasted like melted coffee ice cream.

The boat was pretty crowded, definitely no social distancing, but I guess it was fine? We sat outside on the top deck, so I had slathered on sunscreen before. The tour guide didn’t give as much history of Newport or Rhode Island as I thought, but he did tell us about all the yachts that were docked in the harbor.  We went out and around by Fort Adams and Castle Hill. As we came back to the dock, you could get a great photo of the Claiborne Pell Bridge and the Rose Island Lighthouse.

We went back to the hotel to get out of the sun before getting drinks at the Roof Deck of the Vanderbilt. It was still early, and it was a weekday, so no one was really there. The view was really pretty, I wish we could’ve waited until sunset, but it was time for dinner.

I didn’t realize how popular Brick Alley Pub was, so we put our name on the list and there was a 40-minute wait, so we went back into the shops on Thames Street to look at sweatshirts. The outside of the restaurant looked pretty cute and trendy, but the inside was more quirky/woodsy. We all ate SO much for dinner that we couldn’t eat dessert.

DAY 4 – WEDNESDAY

Corner Café is probably the most popular brunch spot in Newport, so we knew it would have a wait. We put our name in, and then walked down the street to get coffee at Empire Tea & Coffee, which became my family’s favorite place for coffee. We got back to Corner Café 35 mins later, and the host said they had already called our name. We were seated at the next open table and read through the extensive menu.

Next, we were off to tour the Newport Mansions! Nine mansions and the Green Animals Topiary Garden are operated by The Preservation Society of Newport County. We bought the Summer Passport online, which covered entry to three mansions.

The Elms

 Due to the pandemic and construction, there were only three mansions open, so we went to The Elms, The Breakers, and Marble House. I don’t think they were doing tour groups, but you could download an audio tour on your phone and listen to that.

The Breakers

The Breakers was the biggest mansion and definitely the most crowded.  Marble House has a Chinese Tea House in the backyard, so that was cool and different.  Overall, the interiors were pretty similar, all very fancy. I think my favorite mansion was The Elms because of the exterior. I also wish we spent more exploring the grounds.

Marble House

We went back to the hotel to change clothes and get ready for our fancy dinner at White Horse Tavern, which is the oldest restaurant in America.  We made a reservation a couple of weeks earlier and only 5:45 or 8pm were available, so we chose to have an early dinner. I think the Crispy Heritage Pork Belly appetizer was the best thing I ate on the entire trip!!

Unfortunately, they didn’t have any options for dessert that we really wanted, but we did end up going to get ice cream at Newport Creamery near our hotel later. There was a long line and we talked to one of the employees for a long time. He told us about his experience with Jay Leno, so the experience was kind of better than the ice cream.

DAY 5 – THURSDAY

We decided to try a new coffee shop and went to Nitro Bar. It was only one block off the main street, but it felt much less touristy. Then, we finally bought our souvenirs on Thames Street. For breakfast, we drove to brunch at Cru Café. This was probably the most affordable place in Newport. I got avocado toast with eggs for $8!

We had pretty much covered Newport in the past few days, so we planned to road trip up to explore Providence, which is only a 40-minute drive north.

We stopped at the Norman Bird Sanctuary to try to go see some nature. We were scared of ticks, which we saw signs for and the lady at the visitor center warned us about. We didn’t really see that many birds flying around, so we just walked on the trails for half an hour.

Pawtuxet Village was a teeny little area in Warwick. It looked a lot bigger when I was researching. There really wasn’t much except for a few restaurants, so I’d only recommend stopping if you need to eat.

Next, we went to Roger Williams Park, and it was massive! It had a lot of different areas and was free to enter and park. We took some photos at the Temple to Music and then went to the Carousel Village which is a great area for families with small children. We didn’t spend too much time there and just walked around Roosevelt Lake. There are also swan boats, a small rose garden, a Japanese Garden, a zoo, a botanical center, and a Museum of Natural History and Planetarium.

Our afternoon treat was ice cream at Like No Udder, which I didn’t realize was a vegan ice cream shop until I tasted the ice cream. So for vegan ice cream, it was pretty good.

We had a lot of time before we wanted to get dinner, so we stopped by the Capitol building and saw the view of the city from Prospect Terrace Park. Then, we decided to check out Providence Place, the biggest mall in Rhode Island. It had all your typical shops like Madewell, Zara, and Free People. It was a three-story mall, so we got our steps in.  We weren’t looking to eat, but I noticed there weren’t a whole lot of food options.

There’s a Little Italy in Providence, and that’s where we went for dinner. We went to Massimo, which was supposed to have a happy hour, but when we went in, it didn’t really seem like they had it, so we just decided to start our dinner. All the food was good (burrata ravioli!!) and the portions were huge!  We were all so full again, but we did get a tiramisu to go. We ate it later back at our hotel, and it was light and delicious!

DAY 6 – FRIDAY 

We got up early and got coffee at Empire Tea & Coffee before leaving Newport, Rhode Island to drive up to Bar Harbor, Maine.

Overall, Newport, Rhode Island is a great place to get away from the hectic life of the city. I loved the food and all the bougie activities! I’m glad I came and you can definitely see everything you need to see in three days.

IF I WERE TO GO BACK TO NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND

I’d walk the entire Cliff Walk and eat at Binge BBQ. The Rosecliff Mansion was closed while we were there, so I’d want to visit since The Great Gatsby and 27 Dresses movies were filmed there.  It’s an hour away from Newport, but I also want to visit Taylor Swift’s house in Watch Hill, which is the subject of her song “Last Great American Dynasty.” Newport has several state parks that required a pass that we didn’t feel like buying, so I’d want to go to Beavertail State Park and Brenton Point State Park.

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