How the other half lives

Greetings from Newport, Rhode Island where is got into the 60's today! Today mom and I spent the day touring Newport's mansions. Newport is home to some of the most luxurious and extravagant "summer houses" of the rich and famous from the gilded age- and when I say extravagant, I mean WHOA! The Newport Preservation Society has purchased many of the properties that were once summer homes of famous families like the Vanderbilt's and Aster's, and now opens them up for tours, kinda like a museum.

The first house (house doesn't accurately describe these things- more like monstrosities!) we toured was "The Breakers" which was built by the Vanderbilt family in 1895. The Vanderbilt's earned most of their fortune from the railroad business and own homes in New York as well as North Carolina (the Biltmore house featured in the movie "Richie Rich.") The Breakers is over 138,000 square feet (yes, thousand) with over 20 bedrooms and bathrooms. I was sooooo terribly disappointed to learn that we could not take pictures inside the house as I am certain that is what you want to see. Here are some that we got outside the mansion.

Here is another picture of the house that does it better justice (from Google images):
After the Breakers we stopped for coffee and then headed on down the road to The Elms. This was another summer cottage owned by the Berwind's of the Philadelphia coal industry. It was just as impressive- there is no other word to describe these houses then just HUUUUUUUUGE!!! It is really just hard to imagine what life was like for the families that lived in these homes. The audio tours tried to explain what the day-to-day routine was like for these families, but they just left me awestruck. In today's money The Elms would cost over $22 million to build, much less decorate.

After The Elms we took the ocean drive again and snapped some more pictures of the Newport houses since it was clearer outside today.

Tomorrow we are headed up to Bar Harbor, Maine which is seven hours from Newport! So we will be spending most of the day in the car tomorrow. We are really looking forward to having some Maine lobster and clam chowder tomorrow. We have a trolley tour scheduled for Friday and then we are coming home Saturday. We are on the last leg of our trip.