World Trip – Stage 57, Providence, Rhode Island

4-6 August

It was an overcast morning as we trundled with our rucksacks up to Washington Union Station to catch our Acela train to the city of Providence, Rhode Island. The high speed Acela train, with only business and first class carriages, runs with electric engines between Washington DC and Boston at speeds of up to 150mph.

However, tracks are not all upgraded to the needed level and thus its average speed is only just over 60mph over the full journey. At least it doesn’t give way to freight trains and so the overall journeys are quicker. We, and no doubt Amtrak, hope that the infrastructure package signed into law by President Biden will facilitate much faster trains in the future.

Acela does not offer a check-in facility for baggage, nor restaurant service, so we bought breakfast and some sustenance for the journey at the station. The train was pretty full with much noisy chatter.

The weather was dreary as we set off up the coast, reaching the inlets of the Atlantic at Baltimore, following the Atlantic up to Manhattan and then the Sounds of Long Island and Block Island to the capital of Rhode Island State, Providence.

On our first US overnight sleeper to Emeryville, on our way to San Francisco, we chatted to some dining companions who were frequent Amtrak riders. They were from Hawaii, and they recommended Rhode Island as their favourite state, worth a visit. We decided not to aim for Newport on the Island itself, but stay in the capital city Providence.

Providence was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a strict Baptist, believing that state and religion should be separated. It became highly industrialised for a period, but is now very agreeable. It boasts a lovely downtown area, elegant university area and an up-and coming harbour district, with trendy bars, restaurants and ice cream shops! Many buildings and houses date from the early 1800’s. We very much enjoyed walking round the grounds and surroundings of the famous Brown University, Becca’s Alma Mater.

John Brown’s House

We spent some interesting and thoughtful time at John Brown’s house, a successful merchant in the mid 1700’s, whose nephew’s donation to the university determined its name. The house was lavish and imposing, on the top of one of the seven city hills. He and his three brothers had commercial dealings that made them extremely wealthy. Among these dealings was financing slave ships, acquiring men, women and children in Africa and selling them in the Caribbean. The three brothers turned against the slave trade, but John never rescinded. The house contained an exhibition exploring one disastrous slaving voyage and explored the contribution of the slave trade to the fortunes of Providence.

It was quiet, out of term time, but it was fascinating seeing how the buildings resembled English counterparts. At one point you could be forgiven for thinking you were in The Inns of Temple in London at the university or indeed Hampstead Village, with all the grand houses on a hill, had the roads been narrower! So different from New Orleans and its Spanish-style architecture.

We explored the waterfront on the Upper Narragansett Bay and marvelled at the Foxpoint Hurricane Barrier, completed in 1966 (over two decades before the Thames Barrier) after terrible flooding and loss of life, brought about by hurricanes in 1938 and 1954. It takes thirty minutes to manually lower the flood gates by chains. There is also a pumping station to evacuate water from swollen rivers back into the bay.

Providence is at the confluence of the Seekonk River and Providence River and its tributaries, with many bridges crossing them. This makes the town attractive to walk around. However we found the multiple-lane highways which are commonplace in US cities, disagreeable, but we used a beautiful new garden bridge to cross a 10-lane and a 4-lane highway to arrive at the waters’ edge.