Cliffwalk

Aug 13, 2006, the day after Aug 12, 2006, obviously. But the world means completely different to me all at once since Aug 12, 2006. It was quite amazing that I was feeling I owned the eternity only a few months ago back in Greece, and suddenly I felt nothing worthed living for anymore. I could have locked myself out at home but I figured it was better to do something outside. The walk had been planned a week before after all.

So we drove two and a half hours south to have a walk at the famous Cliffwalk in Newport, Rhode Island.

It is not the Rhodes Island of Aegean Sea, but the Rhode Island state of the USA. Historians are disputing the origin of the name. Some historians believes that an Italian explorer name the largest island in the Narragansett Bay Rhode Island because of their similarity in shape; others think that the name came from "Roodt Eylandt", old Dutch for "red island", an Dutch explorer referred to the red clay on the island's shore.

We arrived there at 2 pm. That was fine. The sun was not going to set before 7 pm in the summer. Half of the distance of the Cliffwalk is paved, and half of it is covered with gravels or simply boulders to walk on. As the name implies, the trail is all over a cliff.

With a beautiful view like this, it is quite natural to believe that houses sitting right on this cliff are incredibly expensive. In fact you cannot really buy a house there anymore. People had done that 200 years ago. And they are terribly wealthy folks. They built huge mansions along the trail. Some of them have become museums that admit with entry fee, and some become private clubhouses. There is a private university there too. There are a couple of restaurants there though: one at the head of the trail and a "Chinese Teahouse" in the middle.

A round trip takes about 3 hours. It was a fairly easy walk, except the section made up of boulders. It is mostly flat though, and you can easily maneuver over the boulders as long as you are not on high-heels.

I got this day spent nicely, but worse were still to come.

CLIFFWALK, RI; Aug 13, 2006