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!