Thursday, September 07, 2006

Block Island

Today was a long, but wonderful day. I played hooky from work and we headed to Block Island in RI. When I was four years old, I asked my aunt about some smooth round rocks on her fire place and she told me that they were from Block Island. Since then, I always wanted to go. Today was finally the day.

We drove to Point Judith, RI and then took the ferry over to Block Island. It is about a 55 minute ride over to the island. I'm very cranky in the morning, so the first thing we did is stop at The Orange Cat Cafe on Dodge St for coffee. I was was psyched to find out that they had soy milk and quickly ordered a cappuccino.

After fueling up, we started our walk up to the Southeast Lighthouse and Mohegan Bluffs. Block Island is about 3.5 miles wide with 17 miles of beaches and it is surprisingly hilly. The walk to the lighthouse was mostly uphill for about 1.5 miles. It was worth it though. Here is a picture of the Southeast Lighthouse.

After the lighthouse, we headed a short ways over to the Bluffs. It is 142 steps down to the beach. The stairs are steep as they traverse down the bluffs. Because of this, the steps are a rather interesting geometric design. Here are two photos of the stairs, the first one is looking down and the second looks up.














The 150 foot bluffs were rather imposing. With all the jagged edges and striations they were neat to look at. The first picture reminds me a little of Lord of the Rings.The beach was covered with funky stones and I took tons of pictures. My favorite rock on the beach looked like a shark swimming on top of the sand.

Here is one last photo of the beach. The waves crashing on the rocks were so pretty and the water was surprisingly blue for New England.
After climbing up the steps we walked back into town and went in search of lunch. Froozie's Juice Bar & Cafe really hit the spot. I had a pineapple, peach, strawberry smoothie and a monstrous "Falafel Works" pita which was made up of falafel, hummus, tabouli, and veggies with tahini sauce. Froozie's had quite a few vegan options and lots of vegetarian menu items. Here's a quick photo of my pita before I dug into it. Their falafel was pretty dang good, though I was starving after the 3 mile walk and the climb up and down to the bluffs.

The rest of the day we puttered around and looked at some of the stores on the island. We caught the 5pm ferry back and then stopped at Garden Grille Cafe on the way home for dinner. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera inside the restaurant. My dinner was a side dish of sauteed dandelion greens with roasted red peppers and garlic along with tofu vindaloo over Israeli couscous and sauteed beet greens. The dandelion greens were really unnecessary because of the beet greens, but I wanted to try them out. The verdict...Not a fan of dandelion greens, they were a little bitter for my taste.

I took 70+ photos while on the island. Drop me an email if you want a link to my photo album so you can view the rest. Hopefully this weekend, I will get some cooking done. TGIF!

11 comments:

Dori said...

Awesome pictures! Thanks for sahring. Hooky from work? I won't tell.

Emmy said...

What lovely pictures. Looks like you had a beautiful and fun day :) The falafel sandwich looks tasty.

Valerie said...

What a beautiful place, and your photos are amazing! I bet going back up those stairs was exhausting.

Carrie™ said...

What a fantastic getaway. I'd play hooky for that too. I grew up in New Brunswick and all around the coast there are places similar to this. I've never seen stairs like those though! Wow! It's so calming for me to be around the craggy rocks and the Atlantic Ocean. I just feel at peace when I'm there. I'm going to e-mail you for more pictures. I'll put them on my work computer desktop for when I'm having a hectic day.

KleoPatra said...

Wow, what a day! Jody, how neat to go to a place you have thought about so much, and have such a great time there!

Anonymous said...

Wow! What an incredible way to spend the day. Those pics are really beautiful. Did you take home some memory rocks for your own fireplace?

You commented on my site about Mexican cookies with chocolate and cayenne. Where'd you get the recipe? This sounds very intriguing.

Anonymous said...

Thanks so much for the cookie recipe Jody. I'm definitely going to give these a try! They sound so delicious. I like step 14. Hahahah!

funwithyourfood said...

70 PICS!! you sound like me :)

yay for playing hooky from work

Teddy

Jen said...

Argh! I've been soooo homesick for New England lately and your photos just made it worse (but better, too, if that makes any sense!) What a lovely landscape! Glad you had a good trip :)

Michelle said...

I'm highly impressed with the lighthouse photo. I too have taken many many pictures on Block Island but none of that structure for some reason. Glad you had a good trip and I'll look forward to hearing more about it when you stop playing hooky from work! :)

theONLYtania said...

Yeah, I have Vive le Vegan.. but those cookies were AMAZING! (Yes were... they're gone already.) Thank you sooo much! I want you to be my partner next time too haha.