We met the Potts downstairs of the hotel for breakfast and headed out promptly at 9am to visit some of the Newport Mansions. Our first stop was The Breakers.
This house is massive!!!! Cornelius Vanderbilt II built this monstrosity in 1893 (this is the 2nd, the first burned down) as the family summer home. This is some summer home. This mansion takes the cake with 70 rooms that comprises of 62,482 square feet of living space on five floors. What made these visits even more enjoyable was using the self guided audio tours. While walking through these homes, the audio tour allows you to learn more about the families, the art, the house, and even the gardens. Even if you are only in Newport for one day visiting at least one mansion (The Breakers) should be on your to-do list.
This house is so palatial and grand, and over-the-top with all the ornate furnishings. But I could totally see myself living here. One of the rooms was the size of our house back home. CRAZY!
This sculpture, which is part of a lamp, could be made into a horror movie. I couldn’t stop taking photos of it, it also seemed like it kept staring at me.
More photos of the house, art, and gardens:
Another creepy statue and of course Sienna and Kiley’s pet snail (Mr. Eggerton V) they found:
After our tour of the Breakers we moved on to The Elms. This home was the summer home of the Berwind family and was constructed in 1901 and modeled after the mid-18th century French chateau d’Asnieres outside of Paris. This home is just as large as The Breakers at approximately 64,000 square feet but with only 48 rooms.
What sets this house apart from the Breakers is the gardens. Absolutely amazing and the kids loved the large trees which you can walk in and out of. Beautiful! We loved walking the grounds of this house.
More pics from the gardens:
This is the most amazing tree. So awesome!
Great picture of Little D:
After the visits we were in search of some much needed grub so we headed down to the waterfront. We settled on lunch at the Midtown Oyster Bar. Delicious!!!! I had the most amazing burger, the oyster bar burger. This burger had gruyere cheese, fried oysters, and crispy shallots. SO YUMM!!!! Oh and it was national prosecco day so Briana, Maurisa, and I had to have a few glasses of prosecco.
After lunch we did some shopping, had some gelato, and some of us even had a second round of Del’s frozen lemonade. And due to the rain we decided to head back to the hotel for the hotel happy hour and the so the kids could go swimming. We made it an early evening since we wanted to be on the road by 7am for our trip back to Virginia in the morning.
Next stop Vienna, VA!
Remember whatever it takes, just get out and go!
Aaaaah we loved these mansions but weren’t able to go inside them unfortunately so thank you so much for sharing! They’re just as beautiful as I imagined they would be!