Tsaiberspace

We went to the Newport, RI to look at rich peoples’ mansions (“The Breakers” and “Marble House”). You know you’ve arrived when your house has a name.

They don’t let you take photos inside the houses. The windows are open, so photographic damage can’t be the reason. My belovedly cynical other half thinks that this is just so that the museum store can sell more postcards and photo books, but in this case, I’m actually not that cynical. I agree that money is the motivation, but not for the postcard and souvenir-book businesses. I think they just want (very reasonably so) to keep people moving through the museum so that they don’t clog up traffic, with 6-person groups all taking the same shot with 6 different cameras. If traffic doesn’t get clogged up, they can get more (paying) people through the door. So in that respect, the no-photography rule is motivated more by similarities to the restaurant business than to the movie business.

The mansions are all off of Bellevue Avenue. It is a very inconvenient location because of the presence of a huge shopping mall at the beginning of the two-lane street (with a pedestrian crosswalk to the parking lot, thrown in for extra-good measure) that clogs all automobile traffic and backs it up for many blocks in all directions.

The houses themselves? Ho, hum. The immaculately-landscaped oceanfront houses have 50-200 rooms and had waitstaffs of 20-40 people in their heyday. The Cliff Walk is a very nice ocean-side mostly-paved ¼-mile walk that runs from The Breakers to the Marble House.

The last tour is allowed inside at 5pm; the grounds close at 6pm. We were in the Marble House towards the end, and there was a staffperson following us through the house, politely reminding us that we were between her and the end of her day. We are the type of people who listen to every bit of the audio tour (including all the “optional” bits); three-quarters of the way through, our impatient escort reminded us that the grounds closed at 6pm and that we should be sure to leave time to enjoy the rest of the grounds.