Rhode Island Live Update

Just a quick update, live from the Main Street Whole Foods Market wi-fi cafe in Providence, Rhode Island.

We DID manage to wake me up in time to check out of the hotel in West Boylston, Massachusetts this morning.  Hurray!

We pulled into Providence with the express purpose of grabbing a postcard for our nephews, but the wifi signal here is better than most of the hotels we’ve stayed at, so Neil is programming up a storm while he grazes on seaweed salad and multigrain cucumber and avocado sushi.  (Life is good.) 

We’ll be heading out in quest of a cheap motel and a postcard vendor in Connecticut tonight, and if we manage to wake me up at a reasonable hour tomorrow morning, we’ll be back on the road again.

We have some good friends from Rhode Island and Connecticut respectively.  When we asked them for advice on where to go in the area, they both responded: “Why would you want to go? Don’t go! Just skip them.”

It made me wonder how much money government tourism offices waste on advertising campaigns if the locals are telling people not to visit.  It seems to me that a better investment would be to start with providing both quality government services to residents and educating locals through school curricula and advertising on what is great about your home state and what there is to see and do, so that the people who LIVE there are raving about the place rather than telling people to stay away.  (I’m not commenting on tourism campaigns or education curriculum in Rhode Island or Connecticut specifically; I have no familiarity with them at all. I’m just saying that whatever the tourism boards are doing, it isn’t working on the locals I know.)

We are looking forward to coming back to New England next spring, so if anyone can offer more constructive suggestions than our RI and CT expat friends, let us know what we’re missing out on!

Want to see our great big drive today? You can see today’s driving route here.