Nothing beats a pile of fried whole bellied clams. Unless it’s twin lobster rolls. These are the truisms my sister and I discovered, along with the remarkable seaside and rural scenery, and the opulence of the Gilded Age, during a recent trip to Rhode Island.
She rented a cozy cottage about a ten minute walk from South Shore Beach for a couple of weeks, and I helped get her settled in and stayed a few days. The first day the weather was glorious, mid-70s and sunny, and we enjoyed our clams and fried shrimp at Evelyn’s Drive-In in Tiverton on a picnic bench near the water. By the next day, our long-awaited lobster rolls from Easton Beach Snack Bar outside of Newport had to be enjoyed in the car, as the temperature had plummeted into the 50s and the wind was stiff.
No matter, we had a good time regardless. In Newport we hopped on the free trolley bus, rode it to the end oohing and aahing over the lavish homes, deciding which ones we would want to own given the (not very likely) chance that we became billionaires, then got off and toured two of them: The Marble House and The Breakers. (We could have walked the Cliff Walk between the two, but we might have either frozen or been swept off the cliff’s edge by the wind, so we opted for the longer inland route.)
In addition to seafood and historic mansions, we sampled the local produce in the form of juicy, fresh-picked strawberries, and took some drives and walks in the vicinity of Little Compton to admire the impressive stone walls and quaint gray shingled cottages.
One story must be related regarding the cottage we were staying in: that is, the Mystery of the Weird Sound. The first day we were there, we noticed a sound like some animal growling, or snoring, or just a not very happy poltergeist, emanating from somewhere in the wall (?) or basement (??), loudest in the bedroom in one corner of the house. The owners, who live not too far away, came the next day to investigate and found nothing in the basement (much to our relief), so it remained an ever-present, non-ceasing mystery. I finally figured it must be the electric wires which are attached to the house on that side. They pass through a pretty substantial dogwood tree on their way to the house, and rub against the branches, thus probably causing the sound. My sister didn’t have to deal with it since the master bedroom was far from the sound, and I eventually got used to it, but it was truly creepy that first night!
