My NYC Digs - The Apartment

Instead of doing something useful like washing the dishes or scrubbing the tub, I thought I'd write about my little studio sublet in New York City.

Let's start with the front door. That peculiar coffin-shaped thing on the right is the peephole. It's the oddest peephole I've ever seen. You turn the knob on the right and that opens the little white window. You look through that to see the hallway outside. I have no idea why the peephole cover is so large, or why it's shaped like a coffin, but it's rather charming, particularly as the person I'm subletting from has painted the door with blackboard paint. This makes it a handy-dandy place to write messages to yourself (such as "don't forget your sunglasses" or "buy spinach," but thus far I haven't availed myself of this convenience.

Here is the whole door, in all its blackboard-painted glory. The rectangular thing at the top is a funny postcard John sent me from a recent trip to Chicago. It makes me smile, which is why it's where it is. The round things on either side of the peephole cover are metal containers with magnetized backs. The one on the right is full of colored chalk. The one on the left is empty. I can't think what to put in it so I'm taking suggestions.

As if having the whole front door as a blackboard wasn't enough, there is also a three foot-wide, floor-to-ceiling section of one wall which has also been painted with blackboard paint. I am not providing a photo of this, as it has the code for the apartment's internet on it as well as some personal notes from my loving husband, none of which fall into the need-to-know category for those of you who read this blog. The wall blackboard is surrounded with a scalloped border in a cheery shade of orange.

If you walk in my front door and turn left, you will find yourself in my teeny-tiny kitchen. Don't get me wrong; I am grateful that it's in a separate room (so many studios have the kitchen in the living room, or even the bedroom - when I was apartment hunting, I saw one place where you could literally roll out of bed and stand in front of the kitchen sink). However, it is teeny and has very little counter space, although it has plenty of pots and pans and plastic containers and a full-size fridge and a gas range and a microwave. In this photo you can see the dirty dishes from dinner which I haven't washed because I'm writing this blog. For those that need to know, I had sauteed spinach with garlic and a baked sweet potato, along with a glass of wine, followed by a slice of week-old cake that still tasted pretty good. Like I need cake. Seriously, we keep having cake in the afternoon at rehearsal - lots of Virgos in our cast. However, John bought the cake for us last week when he moved me in, and I feel somehow obligated to finish it up. For week-old cake, it's holding up pretty well.

Next is the bathroom. If you recoiled in horror from the teeny-tiny kitchen, staggered down the hall and made the first right, you would find yourself in a wee anteroom where my closet lives, with the door to the bathroom on the right. The bathroom is also on the wee side, but it has, at least, a full bath with tub, a sink and a commode. I have been provided with some linens by my landlady, and I must point out that the marks on the teal-colored towel draped across the shower rod appear to be from bleach. Most of the provided towels have these bleach marks. However, they still do their job fine, and anyway, they are not the outstanding feature of this bathroom. The outstanding feature is the shower curtain, which fascinates me. It is covered in silhouettes of animals - hedgehogs, deer, rabbits (LOTS of rabbits), birds and insects - in various styles, none of which match. There's a cluster that looks as if it was taken from an vintage edition of "The Brementown Musicians;" there's a fawn that looks a bit like Bambi; there are some birds that look like Japanese woodcuts, and then there's the gem of the collection, The Rabbit With An Attitude:

I do not know why this rabbit is so annoyed, and I can't tell whether it's pruning flowers or eating grapes. Whatever it's doing, it's not liking it. My morning shower is not complete without a few moments' contemplation of The Rabbit With An Attitude, usually while I'm giving my conditioner a few minutes to sink into my hair. I also like the tattoos on the Rabbit's body. What with the tats and the 'tude, this is clearly a badass Rabbit and just the sort of thing one needs to see before one starts one's day in the Big Apple.

Once you leave the bathroom (mind the step; for some reason the bathroom floor is about two inches higher than that of the rest of the apartment, a detail I sometimes forget when I am stumbling in for my first bleary-eyed visit of the day), you will find yourself in the main part of the apartment. This is the living area:

As you can see, the main part of the studio has been rather cleverly divided using a shelf unit, tension rods and curtains, so that the sleeping area at the rear of the apartment can be closed off for privacy. The blue sofa is quite comfy although I could live without the Pepto-Bismol pink throw pillows. The throw over the right side of the sofa is one I brought from home, which coincidentally has rabbits on it, although none have an attitude. The wall with the blackboard paint on it is to the right, out of sight. Facing the sofa but out of the photo as well is another large shelving unit, which is the home of a crooked lamp and a teeny-tiny television. When the mood strikes me, I can watch many many cable channels on this tiny TV which is why I usually fiddle on the computer or read when I'm home.

If you parted the curtains to the right of the sofa, you would find yourself in the bedroom portion of the studio. It's a full bed, which is fine for just me but a bit too snuggy when John is visiting. On the bed is an extremely heavy down comforter. It looks nice, albeit somewhat lumpy, but as of now I'm not sleeping under it as it's still too warm outside (I don't know yet how warm this apartment will be in the winter; there is no thermostat in the apartment and I'm told that the building management determines when to turn on the heat. Right now the a/c is running, but I expect that to change in the near future). When I go to bed I roll the comforter up and put it on the floor, along with the pink throw pillow and the two striped pillows. I brought my own pillow from home which lives behind the striped pillows when the bed is made. I have been sleeping under a lightweight blanket, which is nice and soft but clearly made for a much larger bed - in fact, all the linens appear to be for a queen-sized bed at the very least. This makes for wrinkly sleeping insofar as the fitted sheet is concerned. Sitting on the bed is Road Pig, who has traveled with me to all my out-of-town gigs. He doesn't sleep in the bed at night, though (he hogs the bed yukyukyuk). If you look at the previous photo, you will see a large yellow object in the shelving unit; that is Dug the Dog (from the movie Up), which John gave to me to keep me company in New York. Road Pig sits next to Dug at night. Dug talks to me. No, really, he does - he has a voice box and if you press his left paw he says things from the movie like "I have just met you, and I LOOOOVE you," which is nice to hear first thing in the morning, if only from a stuffed animal. (If your eyes are really good, in the cubicle just above Dug you can see a small plastic Po the Panda from Kung Fu Panda, which was given to me by my friend Matt Anderson. Po also talks, although his vocabulary is not as expansive as Dug's, being limited to kung fu screams and the occasional "skiddoosh." He will move to my dressing room at the theatre eventually.)

This is looking from the bedroom area back toward the front of the apartment. From here you can see the little dining table and beyond it, yet another shelving unit which has a desktop. This is where I sit when I'm at the computer. Since I don't have a closet large enough to house my shoes, they are in a line in the bedroom area - if you look at the bottom of the photo on the left-hand side, you can see a few representative pairs. The blackboard which has information on it which is none of your business is on the other side of the curtain on the left. I took this photo with my back against the windows at the rear of the apartment, so this will give you an idea of how small this studio really is.

And here is the living area as seen from the sleeping area. The dining table and desk are to the left. You can see just how teeny the TV really is, and you can also see the somewhat eccentric but cheery random teal edging in the corner. If you look back at the Dug photo, you can see more eccentric edging along the top of the window, only this time in a rather odd shade of green. But the dividing curtains pull it all together. Kind of.

So that's pretty much where I'm living in New York. I make fun of it, but it's actually quite pleasant and usually fairly quiet. I'm told that the walls of the apartments are concrete, which may account for the quiet and for the occasional cell phone signal difficulty I have in the apartment. I don't get a great deal of noise from the street below, except on Saturdays when everybody seems to go a little crazy. Since my apartment overlooks the Midtown North Precinct, this may be why. Last Saturday was my first night in the apartment; now, a week later, I'm interested to see whether this is going to be a trend. There have been a few whoops and hollers from the street below and some loud car stereos, but it's not been too bad. Which sort of goes for the whole experience thus far.

First Bites of The Big Apple

John and I drove up to New York on Saturday morning with a couple of suitcase and mixed feelings. While I am tremendously excited about making my Broadway debut, it's also extremely difficult for an old bird like me to make a life change. Moving from our quiet little house in Virginia to a tiny apartment on a noisy street in the busiest city in the U.S. is quite a jolt. I shed a few tears as we drove away - I'll miss the town Halloween parade and Christmas walk; I'll miss cooking elaborate meals in my kitchen and decorating my home for the holidays, and I'll miss all my friends who've been so wonderfully supportive of me through this process. But mostly I'll miss John, who will be holding down the fort in Virginia while I'm away.

Our drive up to New York was uneventful and the weather was nothing short of spectacular. Our only slowdown was getting through the Lincoln Tunnel (no surprise there) and then we basically shot up 8th Avenue, parked the car at a nearby garage and humped the suitcases half a block to the apartment building. The doorman was very nice and welcoming, the apartment had been nicely tidied for our arrival, and once John got over how small the place is, he allowed as how I'd done pretty well finding a place.

Once I got stuff unpacked (and cried over encouraging cards John had tucked into my suitcases), we walked the few blocks to the Neil Simon on 52nd Street so I could show John the marquee. He had me wear his The Big Lebowski "Achiever" shirt so he could post the photo at the Lebowski Fest website, but both of us were a little sorry I'd worn it later since it clearly typed us as tourists when we walked uptown to Columbus Circle and Central Park. We finally gave in and did the tourist thing: hired a pedal-cab to give us a tour.

It was actually a lot of fun. Our guide had a thick accent so it made it difficult to understand him much of the time, but he pedaled with a will and was very pleasant. We saw all the major sights - or at least, those that are on the southern section: the Sheep Meadow, The Boat House, The Lake, The Pond, Tavern on the Green and so forth. We got of the cab to walk through Strawberry Fields and see the "Imagine" mosaic, then rejoined our cabbie to finish up the ride. He very kindly took a photo for us before we parted company.

We headed back to the apartment to rest for a bit, stopping off to pick up a few groceries (I'll do a bigger shop later). John caught a quick nap while I continued putting things away and getting settled in and making lists of what I would need to buy to make things a little more homelike (I need a shower organizer and a soap dish and a paper towel holder, for starters). Then we went across the street to a local pub for dinner, walked around a little more, then returned to the apartment, shared a celebratory bottle of champagne and called it a night.

We were both exhausted but neither of us got a very good night's sleep - my apartment overlooks the NYPD's Midtown North precinct so there was a good bit of noise all through the night. In addition, we're accustomed to sleeping in a king bed and sprawling all over, and the bed in the apartment is only a double. It'll be fine for just me, but kind of tight for the two of us. In the morning we walked over to 9th Avenue for breakfast, then went down to find the Ragtime rehearsal space on 43rd Street. Eighth Avenue was closed for a street fair, so we walked through that most of the way down. Then we cut over to Times Square so John could see what that was like, then walked through the street fair some more, and ended up back at the apartment, watching an old movie like a couple of zombies.

Around 3:30 we walked over to the garage to claim the car so John could head home. Tears were shed but we bravely went our separate ways. I headed back to the apartment which was just as well, as John called needing me to look at directions for getting to the Lincoln Tunnel (turns out the route Yahoo! Maps gave us is closed on the weekend). He called again once he was on the Jersey Turnpike, and I expect as I type this that he's home in Virginia, or very nearly so.

So here I am, ensconced in my own little piece of New York, grateful for a loving husband and an opportunity some people can only dream about. I'm still a little shell-shocked and disoriented, but I'm sure once I start work on Tuesday, things will settle into a routine and I'll start to feel like less of a stranger here. I'll keep you posted.

Broadway Bound

Okay, now that it's official, I can talk about it.

I will be heading to NYC in September to start rehearsals for the Broadway revival of Ragtime. This is the transfer of the production I did at the Kennedy Center this spring, and I will be reprising my role as radical anarchist Emma Goldman.

To say I'm excited about it would be an understatement. To say I'm scared would also be an understatement. It's a big move. I'm subletting a studio in midtown Manhattan for the nonce; I will probably shift elsewhere after the first of the year. Meanwhile, John will be holding down the fort at home in Virginia.

The show goes into previews on October 23rd and opens November 15th for an open-ended run.

While I won't comment on the show itself on this blog beyond the usual Crass Commercial Announcements, I will definitely be blogging about my Big Apple Adventure - so stay tuned!

Crass Commercial Announcement - "It's Baaaaack!"

For those of you who missed this show when it had its area premiere back in 2007 - well, we're doing it again.

The 2009 revival of The Musical of Musicals: The Musical! begins previews at MetroStage in Alexandria, VA this Thursday, August 27th. Bobby Smith, Janine Gulisano-Sunday and I are returning from the original cast, joined by the wonderfully funny Matthew Anderson and the multi-talented Doug Lawler at the piano.

Performances are Thursdays and Fridays at 8 PM, Saturdays at 5 PM and 8:30 PM, and Sundays at 3 PM and 7 PM. The preview on 8/27 is a pay-what-you-can.

The show runs through October 18th; however, I will only be with it through September 13th, when I'll be replaced by Heather Mayes. More about THAT in the next exciting installment!

The Bear

Remember a month or so back when we bought an unfinished cedar bear in ? He looked like this:

Well, the finished bear arrived a week ago, and now he looks like this:


He's a handsome bear, and we're very pleased with him. We tried to come up with all sorts of clever names for him, but unfortunately, none of them seemed to fit - so he is simply called The Bear. We decided he was too pretty to leave outside, so he has a place of honor in the living room, where he can greet all our guests.

From the side, he has a rather winsome and winning smile:


Some people have a welcome mat; we have a Welcome Bear.

Eastward Ho

After breakfast, John and I got back on I-5, heading toward Sacramento, where we'd pick up I-80 East. We decided it might be more fun to take some state highways and byways to I-80, rather than get tangled up in the traffic around Sacramento, so we jumped off the interstate at a town called Williams and bore east through the California farmlands. It was actually restful to have something else to look at, and the time passed quickly. We stopped at a roadside fruit stand and bought locally-grown plums, cherries and pistachios (they were delicious; I wish I'd bought more). Eventually we picked up I-80, but jumped off it again when we got into the vicinity of Lake Tahoe.

John had seen Tahoe before, but I had never been there, so we cruised around the northern part of the lake for a bit, then stopped for lunch, then found a place where we could get down to the lake itself. We'd tried at other parks, but discovered that they were private parks and not for the likes of us, so we were grateful to finally stumble on a public park around the east side of the lake. There were a lot of big boulders to climb down, and the weather was bright and beautiful, with a nice breeze coming off the lake.

The downside was afterward, when we got into the car and I discovered that my left ankle was bruised and swollen. I don't know what I did to it or when (I only had a twinge from one knee when climbing on the boulders), and it didn't really hurt, but it was disconcerting all the same. After we got into Nevada, we stopped to get some ice and I traveled the rest of the day with my foot elevated on the dash and an ice pack on my ankle. Nevada was not terribly exciting to look at, and we were glad to stop for the night in Elko.

In the morning we continued on into Utah, and after a wrong turn or two, found ourselves on the road to the Bonneville Speedway. John is a racing buff and was very interested in seeing the place where so many land speed records have been set; I found the area to be just plain unearthly. I guess it would have been plenty weird if the Salt Flats had been its usual dry self, but apparently the area had just had a good bit of rain, so there was a thin film of water across this very flat and salty area. The sky was blue and cloudless and there was not a lot of wind, so the water reflected the nearby crags and jags in a very weird, otherworldly way:


Had there not been water on the Flats, I believe I would have been hard-pressed to keep John from racing the truck across the Speedway, which we really didn't need for him to do, it being full of our luggage, traveling accoutrement and a lot of Oregon wine. We found a spot that was mostly dry, and he walked out a good ways to get a feel for it. Even so, he said there were moments where his feet broke through the damp salt layer, and I was glad that we didn't drive on it.

From the Salt Flats we continued east into the Salt Lake City area. I really didn't care anything about stopping in Salt Lake City, but we knew we HAD to stop and see the Great Salt Lake. Now, we'd SEEN the GSL on our way west, when we picked up I-84 near Ogden, but we hadn't actually VISITED it, and certainly had not paddled in it. Swollen ankle or not, I was going to paddle in it. As we approached Salt Lake City, I kept getting fooled into thinking we had reached the Lake by the same kind of standing water we'd seen on the Bonneville Speedway. Eventually, though, we saw the Lake to our left, took an exit just past a marina to have a look, and stumbled on a very strange-looking edifice.

It was a rectangular box of a building, with Moorish "onion bulb" towers at the corners and gateway. We found it quite peculiar - nothing seemed to "fit," and it seemed to be abandoned, although there were signs directing the way to an indoor gift shop. We opted to check it out after walking down to the edge of the Lake, which shimmered in the distance about a quarter mile away.

The Lake had salt flats of its own, covered with a scummy film of water and mud, and this made walking a little dicey. I kept slipping, which was no fun with the messed-up ankle. We passed little wads of what looked like bunches of bleached grass, but on closer inspection turned out to be bird carcasses. It was fairly disconcerting, and the smell wasn't much to write home about, either. Things got a little better as we neared the shoreline, and I pulled off my shoes, rolled up my pants legs and had myself a little paddle. Other people passed me, heading out to deeper waters for a float:

I liked that guy's stylin' headgear.

After my paddle, we went back toward the oddball building, which turned out not to be abandoned after all, as there was a young man mowing the lawn. We found our way inside to the gift shop and discovered that the building is a fairly famous one, or at least, the rebuilt version of one: The Great Saltair. This was a turn-of-the-century resort, and as was often the case with resorts of that era, it burned down more than once. The current Saltair is located a little ways from the site of the original, and its Frankenstein-like appearance is due to the building actually being an airplane hanger in its previous life, with the onion bulb decorations planted incongruously on top.

Due to the capricious nature of the Great Salt Lake, the current Saltair was flooded shortly after it opened. Several years passed and the waters receded, but retreated so far that the Saltair now sits in its high and dry position. Given time, I guess, it might find itself flooded again; meanwhile, it's home to rock concerts on a semi-regular basis. It's a bizarre sight, all the same - and just a wee bit depressing.

We got hung up in highway construction traffic as we headed out of Utah into Wyoming, but eventually we were backtracking the very path we'd taken when we'd headed west. We stopped for the night again in Rawlins and stayed the next night with my sister and her family in Nebraska. Our final night on the road was in Greenfield, Indiana, and we reached our home on Monday the 22nd at about 9:30 PM. Unlike the conclusion of our cross-country trip two years ago, we did not have any disasters waiting to greet us. The A/C had moved out of its vacation programming and the house was nice and cool. Our neighbor had mowed the grass. The garden was growing nicely and the potted plants in the house and on the deck were doing just fine. We were home again, home again, jiggety jog.

Oh, and John creamed me in Punch Bug again - 168 to 111.

Heading Back

On Wednesday the 17th, we reluctantly checked out of the Elizabeth Street Inn to start our homeward journey. My heart always hurts a little bit when we leave Oregon - it's a wonderful place, whether you're on the coast or in the high desert. Or anywhere, for that matter.

We made a brief side trip back to the town of Seal Rock, which we'd passed on our way south two days before. We'd noticed a woodcarving shop with a big sign that said BEARS there. John and I have always wanted a wooden bear. Not a big bear, like the eight-footer that stands outside our local Famous Dave's BBQ joint, but a wooden bear that could, perhaps, sit outside on our front stoop, or maybe on our deck. Anyway, we decided to duck back down to Yachats and see what we could find.

We parked in the gravel lot by the woodcarver's shop and had a look at the bears outside (all too large) before moving into the shop itself. We could hear an electric saw running somewhere nearby but there was no one in the shop, although there were plenty of smaller bears. Many were the size we wanted, but we really wanted a bear with its paw raised in greeting, and these bears were doing everything else. After a bit the saw sounds stopped, and we were joined by Karl Kowalski, who had been working on a sculpture in the back. He and I chatted about his work, and John wandered off. After a minute he called me outside, where a new sculpture had been added to the ones outside.

"I just finished carving him and put him outside to dry," Mr. Kowalski said. The bear was about a foot and a half tall, carved of red cedar, with a winsome expression and the all-important raised paw. In other words, he was perfect. The bear wasn't finished yet (he would still have to dry before getting a finishing coat and some eyes), but we bought him anyway, and Mr. Kowalski says he'll be shipped to us in early July. So we'll have a little piece of the Oregon coast in a few weeks.

The receipt from our bear purchase tucked away securely, we took a few moments for a quick farewell paddle in the ocean, then pointed the car to I-5 South. Our ultimate destination for the day was Redding, California, with a stop at what we were sure would be the cheesiest of tourist traps - The Oregon Vortex and House of Mystery.

It took a while to get there. We had to get off I-5 between Grants Pass and Medford and make our way down some narrow backwoods roads that finally ended in the parking lot of the attraction. We were surprised to find quite a few cars there. We parked, paid our admission and were invited to join a tour that had just started. Now, all of us at one time or another have been in "mysterious" crooked houses, where the laws of gravity seem to go awry. There was a great one at the now-defunct Opryland theme park called The Angler's Inn (my youngest sister Joan worked there way back when, as did fellow actress Sherri Edelen). But the people who work at the Oregon Vortex sort of pooh-pooh the House of Mystery. They remind you frequently that the House is not the Vortex; it just happens to be in the Vortex. According to the guides, the House was an mining office built in the early 1900s, which slid off its foundations a few years after its construction. The Vortex, however, has been here for a much longer time.

Our guide was a college-aged girl who was clearly new on the job; she didn't quite have the patter or the display routine down, but this gave the experience a sort of raw credence. If someone had given us a slick line of talk, I would have been more skeptical than I was. According to the literature available at the site, The Oregon Vortex is a spherical field of force, half above the ground and half below the ground. It is an area of naturally occurring visual and perceptual phenomena. Right. I did the Angler's Inn tour with my sister; I know that a building that's on a tilt is going to make you feel like gravity has gone awry. And indeed, our guide had all the usual props that go with these kinds of attractions: billiard balls that run uphill, a plumb line that hangs at a angle, a broom you can stand on end. But let me show you the weird part:

This is John and me, standing between two posts on the site:


And this is John and me in the same spot, but after changing places:



See what's happened? I should note that we took this with the timer on our camera, and the camera was in the same pace for both shots.

Now I know someone is going to come along and debunk this with physics and perspective and talk of Ames Rooms, but all I can tell you is that it's super weird. It would have been fun, too, except that almost immediately upon entering the area I got a headache and felt slightly nauseated. I don't know what that was all about, but about half an hour down the road after we departed, I felt better. All the same, it was a funky good time.

Before long we saw Mount Shasta looming in the distance, and we crossed into California. We passed Shasta Lake, which seemed very, very dry (I found out later that the water level is, indeed, quite low). Eventually we pulled into our hotel in Redding, an old-fashioned two-level motor lodge with an outdoor swimming pool. We hadn't been there an hour when the power went out. Appparently a bird had flown into a nearby transformer. It was hot outside and without air conditioning, it rapidly grew hot inside as well. People propped open the doors and windows of the room; men took off their shirts and stood outside smoking by their trucks. It looked like a scene from My Name Is Earl. I didn't help matters by standing barefoot in the doorway of our room, filing my nails (the outage occurred when I was in mid-manicure). Eventually it got so dark outside that there was nothing to do but lie in bed and hope for a breeze. Fortunately the power kicked back on after an hour and a half, and we cranked the A/C down and went to sleep, dreaming of the ocean breezes we'd left behind.

In Vino Veritas

In reviewing the photos I took on June 16, I find that there are - none. This is not surprising, as this is the day John and I drove from Newport up into the Willamette Valley region of Oregon. We went there to sample wines, specifically pinot noir. We are big fans of Oregon pinot noir.

I do believe we took the camera, but be honest: who really wants to see pictures of people sampling wines? A lot of people treat a tasting as a pub crawl, but John and I were really tasting - swirling the wine in the glass, taking a big ol' sniff of the contents, sipping a bit and swilling it around our palates and then - I know, it's kind of horrible - spitting the wine out.

My guess is that a lot of people who visit the vineyards to taste the wine are actually drinking it, because a a couple of the tasting rooms we had to ask for a dump bucket, and at least once got an odd look for doing so (and at another, were complimented on our "restraint"). But we visited about ten vineyards/tasting rooms and sampled between two and six wines in each of them. The average-sized pour when you're sampling is about an ounce. If we drank every pour we got, we'd have been legless within two hours.

So anyway - no pictures of that day. We had an 11:00 AM appointment at
Adelsheim, an old favorite that never disappoints, but we arrived in the area half an hour early, so we went up the hill to Bergstrom Winery, which was already open, and sampled their wines. Then we backtracked to Adelsheim and spent a good hour there. Many of the wineries in the area do tastings only by appointment, and still others are not open during the week (we were there on a Tuesday, which is definitely an off-day), so our tasting selections were largely based on which places were open. Other than a break for a leisurely lunch, we tasted from about 10:30 AM to 5 PM, when most of the tasting rooms closed. We tasted a lot of wine: Ponzi, Sokol Blosser, August Cellars, Rex Hill, Hip Chicks, Fox Farm and another old favorite, Erath, plus some others I can't remember. On our way back to Newport, we stopped at another favorite, Flying Dutchman, which is located on the coast, right by the Devil's Punchbowl.

And yes, we bought a LOT of wine.