Backdated Birthday Post - Day 2

Ok. Saturday. Day two of my birthday trip to Newport RI. This post has been backdated since I actually wrote it once I returned from my trip. 

I started my day by climbing on the roof deck of my hotel and surveying the view. It's lovely!

Me on the roof of my hotel.

View from the roof of my hotel.

View from the roof of my hotel.

My next step was to get a bracelet for Winterfest, since apparently that was going on all weekend and the bracelet lets you into events and gets you discounts on tours, restaurants, etc. I had to pick up the bracelet at a different hotel but that was fine because the walk to the hotel was pretty.

View of my hotel from the dock. 

Hotel.

Buoys by the hotel.

Seagull by the hotel.

Buoys by the hotel.

Chairs and a bridge over the water.

Cute little lighthouse.

I found a shell!

It turns out that hotel was also the location of the first event I wanted to attend that day: A Macaroni and Cheese Competition! I'll be honest with you - my Mac and Cheese Throwdown was better. Way better. Partly because everything there was vegetarian and partly because my friends and I are awesome cooks. So there.

Mac and cheeses.

Crowd eating mac and cheese. 

Time to vote! Me with the voting list.

Casting my ballot.

After stuffing myself and casting my vote, it was off to Fort Adams for a tour.

Fort Adams.

Fort Adams is HUGE. It's 20 acres and it could house 2400 soldiers and 468 cannons. They hired 500 Irish workers to build it which is why Newport has such a big Irish population. Who knew, right? The west wall of the fort seals off Newport harbor, which is the deepest harbor from RI to MA, and the east wall faces Narragansett Bay. This gives a pretty nice view if you go up on the walls of the fort.

View from the fort wall.

At the southern wall is a complex defense system with multiple defensive trenches and buildings creating “kill zones” to prevent enemies from scaling the walls of the fort.

Kill zone.

Another kill zone.

At one point between world wars it was called the “country club of the army” because it saw no action and the bored troops set up a baseball diamond and football field on the parade and a movie theater and bowling alley in the west wall. Random, right?

Look at how giant the middle of this fort is!

They've actually kept some of the old decrepit officer's quarters as is and you can wander around in them. I wish I'd had a ghostly model with tangled hair and a flowing ball gown. This place is just screaming for a ghostly fashion shoot. Clearly, this was one of the highlights of the tour for me.

Falling apart officer's quarters.

Chair by the window in the decrepit officer's quarters.

And now we get to my other favorite part of the tour. The fort contains 2400 feet of “listening” tunnels were dug 50 feet under the ground where the defenders of the fort can hear anyone digging under the fort. We were given flashlights and allowed to go into the listening tunnels! You have to crouch since the ceilings are under 5 feet high.

My flashlight.

Listening tunnel.

Me and my flashlight.

Basically my conclusion is that the fort designer Simon Bernard (a French military engineer) was a genius and if he were still alive I would hire him to build my fort if I ever needed one. Also, Fort Adams is a great go-to place in the event of a zombie apocalypse. It'd be really easy to re-fortify and the middle is giant enough to grow plenty of crops.

By the end of the Fort Adams tour it had started to rain, so I decided I should head indoors to the art museum. I did wander the town a bit on my way to and from the museum, though.

Mural I liked.

More of the cool mural.

Dolphin statue.

Wasn't sure what this tower was but it was neat!

Huzzah! The Newport Art Museum!

The art museum was exciting to me because it had not one but two exhibits I was excited about. The first was a group exhibit called Domestic Affairs: Domesticity, Identity, and the Home. This exhibit included some really talented contemporary artists and the idea was to explore issues of domesticity/the home and identity. Out of everything, my three favorite artists were:

Nancy Grace Horton:

This is from her Ms. Behavior series. 

Leslie M. W. Graff:

This one is called "Glass Ceiling (Lemon Cake)" from her Just Desserts Series in 2016.

Nadine Boughton:

This one is called "Rugged Men" and it's from her True Adventures in Better Homes series 2013-2018.

The other exhibit I was really excited about was Lissa Rivera's Beautiful Boy series. In this series, Rivera photographs her domestic partner, who is a male crossdresser. The series actually started when the two of them were friends and has continued as their romantic relationship developed. It explores issues of queer femininity through photographic portraits and the results are both gorgeous and interesting. Here are a few examples:

I stayed at the museum until closing. After that I decided it was time to chill out in the hotel. I took a whirlpool bath, watched TV, and just hung out until my friend Karaoqueen arrived. She got in late, and we were both so exhausted by the time she got there that we pretty much went straight to sleep. So much for being party animals.