Day 321 – Marble House

After beginning our morning slow and easy with coffee and a nice big family breakfast, we made our way to another mansion. Until the end of the year, all mansion tours are free for Newport residents so I intend to take full advantage. So, for my intention today, I wanted to tour the Marble House. The tour lasted about an hour and was so amazing. Today was rainy but fairly warm considering and every mansion was packed with people. With all the holiday décor and Christmas lights up at all the mansions- it makes them even that much more desirable to see.

After our tour, we wandered the grounds and went out back to the stand alone Chinese Tea House in the back yard. This mansion was very different from the Breakers in that it felt more like “home” inside. Each room had a distinct theme but they were vastly unique from one room to the next. Although each room had stark contrast- in my eyes, somehow it still worked. The rooms went from French Chic directly to Gothic- traditional to posh, etc. The entire inside was very fittingly all marble with grand chandeliers, statues, ceilings, walls and more. Built in 1892, this house was considered at that time to be the number one residence in the United States. Just a few years later, the Breakers was built and the Newport mansion building war was on! Everyone started building mansions and trying to out-do each other. Actually these two mansions were owned by the Vanderbilt brothers, which is just a fun fact. So much to learn and awe about in this grand gilded age and this lovely town I now call home.

It was another amazing tour, very informative and quite interesting and I was happy to have this as my intention today. Afterwards as we were driving and passed the beach, we noticed that there were so many surfers out (at least 30). I asked Vinny to pull over and we walked the beach listening to the large waves crash and it was sprinkling just a bit. Even though, you can simply never go wrong with spending time at the beach! #HappySaturday #HGAL