How To Spend One Day in Newport, Rhode Island

I decided for Mother’s Day this year I wanted a day trip with my husband and three kids. My oldest only has a couple of years left with us before college days and I want to soak in the family time as much as I can. I spent many of my younger days in Rhode Island but realized I never took my kids there so off we went.

Make yourself a mental note, find out ahead of time if colleges are graduating the weekend you are going. It didn’t even dawn on me but University of Rhode Island and Salve Regina were having some ceremonies and it was busy in the areas we went. Not ideal. We were still able to park where I wanted early in the day but had trouble once mid afternoon rolled around.

We started our day with brunch in Washington Square. I’m a sucker for a cobblestone street (there are none in Connecticut!) and was overjoyed to take some pictures walking down one.

We ate a delicious brunch at Stoneacre Brasserie. I realized my life lacked mimosas made with fresh squeezed orange juice. I’ll never be the same! We loved the smoked trout deviled eggs and the kids ordered seconds of them.

Next we drove to the Cliff Walk area and parked (for free) at The Breakers Mansion visitor parking. With Salve Regina’s graduation parking was limited but luckily even without tickets to go inside The Breakers we were still allowed to park there. I would have loved to tour inside the mansion but I knew we didn’t have a lot of time to add that in and with the children not vaccinated we decided to exclude it. I have toured mansions in the past and highly recommend seeing one at some point in your life 🙂

We walked to one of the entrances to the Cliff Walk and explored part of it, knowing we weren’t able to do the entire walk I knew I wanted to head south once we reached the water. I recommend ahead of time deciding which areas of the cliff walk you’d like to see. It was quite windy and cooler by the water and we didn’t even make it all the way to the Marble House before deciding to take the road back to the car to warm up.

I had my hopes on visiting the Castle Hill Lighthouse and when we drove to Castle Hill Inn to see it they wouldn’t let us in 😦 Since the pandemic started they were only letting patrons of the Inn on property, rightfully so I think, but something I did not read online anywhere ahead of time.

We drove by Fort Adams and along Thames Street, making some stops for me to admire the seaport area. The wharf area of Newport was our next stop but alas the parking was nonexistent and when I saw the crowds of people I decided to look for dessert outside of Newport. Walking along the wharf is beautiful and I recommend it if you can!

A day to Rhode Island without a doubt has to include a Del’s frozen lemonade. I lived in Rhode Island for several years as a child and have fond memories of clam cakes and a Del’s. Luckily finding a Del’s outside of Newport wasn’t too difficult 🙂