Providence

Our luck has run out with regards to the weather and it is pouring down this morning. We are booked on the architectural walking tour at 11am, the first being at 9am when they all set off with umbrellas and all came back like drowned rats.
This hotel (recently refurbed by Hilton apparently) is a relic of the Gilded Age also and has a grand lobby and central staircase with a post box still on every floor for guests to post their letters. The room is massive with a seating area, a sort of dressing come luggage room and a sink area which is in semi gloom-hardly any light at all so cleaning teeth is by memory 🤣😂 We are on the 14th floor. There is a small park opposite which last night was home to a few drug dealers and people sleeping rough-first time I’ve felt unsafe on this particular trip.
However, we set off on the walking tour, having borrowed an umbrella, with the guide, a native of Providence who I can only say suffered from verbal diarrhoea and didn’t stop for breath. Most of the time he was reading the facts from his file and would sometimes tell himself that he didn’t know anything about this or that and would skip over it (audible to us!) He’d been a mailman for 20 years he said and then later a tour guide in Providence, New York and Washington but when COVID hit he was left unemployed. Have to say he wasn’t the best….. Thankfully it only started to rain at the end of the tour so we didn’t get wet. We saw some interesting buildings and also quite a bit of street art.
Ted and I then went out and walked by the river and saw a memorial to the marines killed in the 1983 Beirut bombing. Crossing over the river on College Hill is Brown University, a prestigious educational establishment, 7th oldest in the US, founded at end of 18th century and has produced 11 Nobel prize winners to date.
This time last week we were on our way here and tonight is the last night. We set off at 8am in the morning by train to Boston.Leggi altro