Newport

Even on a gray weekend in November, Newport can seem like a zoo. Grabbing a parking place right in front of Empire Tea and Coffee, after circling downtown several times, wasn't the only highlight of the day, but it did seem like a bit of a coup.

The Cliff Walk extends from Easton's Beach at the north all the way south and around the corner at Lands End, passing Salve Regina University (Catholic), The Breakers (Vanderbilts), Rosecliff (paid with silver from Nevada's Comstock Lode), and Rough Point (more Vanderbilts), and few dozen other monuments to wealth, inheritance, and aristocracy.

Ocean Drive extends along the southwest shore of Newport. I admit that I didn't find the boxy stone chateaus along the Cliff Walk and Bellevue Drive very compelling, but I really liked the shingled New England "cottages" on Ocean Drive. The houses were more interesting and more colorful and they complemented the landscape better (unfortunately, I didn't end up with any pictures of this stretch).

Brenton Point, at the far end of the loop, is the site of a large memorial to Portuguese navigators and a smaller one to fishermen lost to the sea. It looked like it would be a pretty brutal place during a big winter storm.