Rhode Island

I know, we are behind with the blog... sorry! But we are catching up and will post more in the next few days.
So on Monday we spent the night at Jessie and Alex's house in Rhode Island, the house that Alex built with his bare hands (and some help from me, if you look carefully above the front door you can still see the plank I nailed on). It's always impressive to visit and think back to the patch of mud that Alex showed me five years ago. We make a good construction team, no doubt about that.
When we arrived Jess was baking cookies to welcome Ian, who is now SIX, back from his first day at summer camp. Ian lost no time showing us how Luke Skywalker stands with a light sabre, which was lucky as I had forgotten, and telling us all about camp and his baseball team. He is a great talker and very entertaining. Alex then told us about his windfarm business and the big project they have won to install 60 turbines, good luck! Then we had a lovely evening of homecooking, whisky drinking and gossiping.
Next day we took our hire car down to Newport, the seaside town favoured by millionaire industrialists at the beginning of the last century. It has a Great Gatsby feel (though far from Long Island); the centre piece is Bellevue Avenue, a street lined with swanky mansions in various European styles. To C's delight, we visited The Breakers, the 70-room summer home of the Vanderbilts, and had an hour's upstairs/downstairs tour, taking in the sea views, gold-inlayed dining room, platinum-inlayed music room and dozens of slightly gaudy but impressive rooms.
The tour tells how the house was built and lavishly decorated in only two years, with whole rooms assembled in France and shipped in boxes, Ikea-style.
There are also tales of famous parties, the social heirachy of the day and the sad family history.
From one millionaire's mansion to another, that evening we drove back for a dinner party in NY's Upper West Side hosted by our mergermarket boss Charlie in his newly acquired "brownstone". Rick proudly showed us around, while caterers made dinner for a room full of editors (not sure what the collective term for editors is, a correction?) That was a great evening too, and a nice boozy way to start thinking about work again
G