Cape Cod 2016

July 10th (Sunday)   We left Roslyn hotel, Roslyn, NY after attending my nephew’s wedding at the Maha Vallabha Ganapathi temple in Flushing, NY Saturday, July 9. We left the following day after breakfast by 11 am in our rental car and drove south towards Morganville, NJ to visit Guruvayurappan temple.             Guruvayurappan Temple, Morganville, NJ   We reached there by about 2 pm. We were awed by the forest like acreage with lots of green trees and meadows and a lengthy pathway and finally a massive granite stone stairway leading up to a typical South Indian style Rajagopuram.  An Indo-American cultural fair was going on and several tents were erected on the temple grounds. Many deities inside. The wooden architecture for the main Guruvayurappan shrine was unique and beautiful. There was a Venkateswara shrine on the right and Siva and Ganapathi shrines on the left with their individual mantapams. Besides this other Hindu deities adorned niches along the wall or around the mantapams. We came outside through the granite steps and went around to the stalls that were selling saris, crafts, golu dolls, Indian garments and such. They were all fairly expensive and since we would have to pack them for travel we just skimmed through and did just window shopping. Next, we went to the Bhojana Shala where there was a long line due to the crowds visiting the fair. We ordered cone masala dosa and channa batura with Badam milk for drinks. Lastly, before leaving by about 4 pm, we had filter coffee.   We checked into Days Inn, New Haven, CT, for the night halt. Not too surprisingly it was owned by an Indian couple. The room was large and decent and we had a comfortable night’s rest. We went to Yale University and ate at the Thali Too Vegan restaurant on the Yale Campus village for dinner. Had Naanizza and Naanini which were both good Indian versions of pizza and panini made using naan instead of pizza crust or bread. It was pretty decent food but a bit pricey as typical of pure Vegan joints. After that, we went around the beautiful Yale campus and took some photos. Most buildings were either brick or stone and concrete facade.   July 11th (Monday)   Woke up early and had breakfast in the hotel lobby. Just sandwich and coffee. We drove to Peabody Museum but it was closed being a Monday. We just drove around and took some more photos of the campus.             Yale Campus Buildings   Left New Haven around 12:30 and we reached Cape Wind waterfront resort in Falmouth, MA. On the way, we stopped and ate lunch at Veggie Fun at Providence, RI, a pan-Asian restaurant. We had miso soup, Singapore style rice noodles, and sautéed eggplant and string beans. Again another pricey Vegan joint.   After lunch, we drove to CapeWind Waterfront resort in Falmouth. The property is beautiful both on the front side as well as the back. For $200 a night, rooms were just comfortable, nothing fancy. A beautiful pond, named the Great Pond, on the back side with small private jetty leading to a boat dock and rustic wood swings made it very appealing and a quiet place to stay.                     Capewind Waterfront Resort, Falmouth, MA   After checking into Capewind resort, we went grocery shopping and bought a loaf of bread, basil avocado spread, vegetables, flavoured yoghurt and some fruits. Had that for dinner. After dinner, we drove around looking for Palmer Avenue parking to take the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard next morning. On the way, stopped at Nobska lighthouse, but it was closed at @4pm. Took a couple of pictures at the salt pond on the way back from Nobska.     Nobska Lighthouse near Woods Hole, MA     The Salt Ponds beach     Salt Pond near Nobska Light House, Falmouth, MA   July 12th (Tuesday)–We had veggie sandwich and coffee in the room. We left our room by about 8 am to reach Palmer Ave parking to catch the  Steamship Authority ferry which was to take off at 9:30 am. We were to reach at least 30 minutes in advance but due to tourist season the parking lot was full even at 8:30 am. We were redirected to the technology park parking lot. Sundar jumped a fence to check if there was enough time to catch the ferry if we parked there. They couldn’t guarantee that. So he backed up all the way out of the parking lot. Disappointed but we made a quick decision to head out to Hyannis to catch a ferry to Nantucket Island hoping to spend at least half a day there. It was a 45-minute drive to Hyannis port where the ferry to Nantucket was to take off.  There too, the first parking lot at Yarmouth was full and we were directed to Lewis Bay parking lot. It was only 3 minutes to the ferry dock. We took the high-speed ferry which was one hour-long. The regular ferry would have taken 2 hours to get to Nantucket. The price for the high-speed STA ferry is $25 each way and the regular was $18.  High-speed ferry had cushioned seats and USB power points to plug our cell phones.   As soon as we reached Nantucket, we saw a lady with a board that said Barrett’s Tours. The bus tickets were $22 for each of us. The lady who drove the bus was Betsy and claimed she was an 11th generation resident of the island. All the houses in Nantucket are restricted to the same type of material for the roof and the facade of the front using cedar wood shingles. These are typically bright yellow when new and gradually fade to a dull gray with age.                                     The first stop was the windmill. A few houses were converted to clapboard construction. No fencing or walls are allowed around the houses. For privacy, the residents simply grow tall hedges neatly trimmed. Some shaped like whales including one end that apparently looked like they forgot to trim. But on closer scrutiny, it happens to be the spot on top of the whale!   The second stop was a lighthouse which we saw from afar across a large green meadow. Saw historical homes around main street Nantucket. No chains like Mc Donalds, Burger King, pizza hut are allowed on the island. Only chain allowed is Stop and Shop by virtue of an existing contract they had signed earlier. We saw Tommy Hilfiger house. We saw an ordinary-looking hamburger place but with fancy valet parking for no obvious reason. Nantucket means “faraway island” in the local Wampanoag Indian dialect. The entire island is one town with several villages inside. Only animals in the island are deer which had been migrated from mainland, birds, squirrels, and mice. One Stag deer was brought in first and later to give it company another was brought in. They were the ancestors of the present herd of deer on the Island.   Third stop was a cranberry bog. The cranberries are grown in a bog/marsh area. To harvest it, they flood it and then use an agitator machine to shake off the cranberries which then float to the top being lighter. Then they are scooped out of the water to harvest them. Cranberries are the main crop of Nantucket Island. Whaling museum was closed at 5 so we couldn’t see it. The admission to the museum included a tour of 5 sites. Since we didn’t have enough time for the tour, we skipped that. The bus tour was from 12 to 2:30.  So we also missed the historic walking tour which started at 2:15 pm. At 3 we had a veggie wrap at the lemon press. After that, we had ginger ice cream which was exotic. We did a self-guided walking tour using a map provided by the Visitor’s Center. The main street was paved with cobblestones which were unique. Saw white, blue, pink, and violet hydrangea flowers everywhere.                 Took the ferry back to Hyannis Port at 5:15 and reached at 6:15 pm. On the way back, we stopped at the Cape Cod mall to eat at Kebab and Curry and had chole and naan. It wasn’t any good at all and we regretted eating there. Reached our resort by 8 pm.   July 13th   Woke up early and took some photos around the property. Went down the steps to the water and took some photos on the wooden swing. Rode up to the nearest parking lot in Woods Hole and caught the Island Queen ferry. The seats were uncushioned, and the tickets were cheaper. It was $20 each way. Purchased tickets for the bus tours at the ferry port which were $22 each. We were told that the tickets for the bus tours might be higher at Martha’s Vineyard. It took us half an hour to reach Martha’s Vineyard. The driver/tour operator was from Tajikistan with an accent. Had a tough time following him. The map of Martha’s Vineyard looks like an upside-down cow! It is an island off of Cape Cod and includes the smaller island of Chappaquiddick Island. Sen Ted Kennedy’s automobile accident in his younger days at this island came to mind. It is a low crime area. Police have no work but escorting drunk people to their hotels.                     Source: WikipediaLike the nearby island of Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard was brought to prominence in the 19th century by the whaling industry, during which ships were sent around the world to hunt whales for their oil and blubber. The discovery of petroleum in Pennsylvania gave rise to a cheaper source of oil for lamps and led to an almost complete collapse of the industry by 1870.   We passed by Gayhead lighthouses and stopped at a series of handicraft stores owned by the Wampanoag Indians. We saw Buddhas and several Indian crafts, incense as well.Took several photos at the Aquinnah Gayhead cliffs. It is known for its beautiful clay cliffs and quiet natural serenity. The beach below the cliffs is called Moshup’s Beach.                             Source: WikipediaThe Flying Horses Carousel is the oldest operating platform carousel in America. Located in the historic resort community of Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts on Martha’s Vineyard, the carousel was apparently first located in New York City before being moved to the island in the 1880s.     Flying horses carousel   Next stop was at the gingerbread cottages of Martha’s Vineyard. A fairytale-like land awaits in Oak Bluffs. More than 300 Easter egg-colored houses complete with dainty trimmings and names such as “Angel Cottage,” “Wooden Valentine,” and “The Pink House,” make up the cottage colony. The colony – a major tourist draw – is a sweet treat for the eyes.                                               On just one cottage, the public is allowed inside, all the others being occupied. An elderly gentleman explained a bit history about the cottages. And we toured all the antiques let by the occupants. One such was a spice box which was similar to the Indian “anjarapetti” to store spices.     There was a total of 330 cottages. During winter all but occupants in 30 cottages move to Newport, RI.We did a walking tour, stopping by at a sewing shop, where the owner lady was working on her kits.  She creates her designs on a computer and then reduces them to appropriate mat sizes and meticulously transfers the colored designs manually on to mats for the customer to cross stitch the threads with appropriate colors. We walked to a beach nearby and spent some time before heading back to the ferry port.     Motorcycles, bikes and two-wheelers were available for rent on the island.    We returned to Woods Hole in the last Island Queen ferry from Oak Bluffs leaving at 6:45 pm. Back at the Cape Wind, we took some more pics of the property of capewind resort.   July 14th (Thurs)   We checked out of the Capewind resort around 9 am and headed towards Provincetown, MA at the extreme tip of Cape Cod. We took Hwy 28 back to Hxy 6, the main hwy through Cape Cod all the way to to the tip. The route was scenic and busy with summer tourist traffic.   We reached there about 11:00 am and navigated through the narrow one-way main street and parked next to the visitors’ center. There were two tours, the whale watching, and sand dune jeep tours starting at 1:30 pm lasting 3 hrs. We had to skip those for lack of time. Instead, we walked over to Pilgrim Tower which looks like a rook and the Pilgrim Museum which is about a 10 min walk uphill. We bought two tickets for $10 each. Climbed up the Pilgrim tower and took some pictures of the panoramic view of the entire Cape Harbor. The climb was quite strenuous consisting of alternating ramps and steps for a total of 161 step up a rectangular shaped spiraling staircase. We went to the nearby snack bar on the museum grounds. The lady who worked there described the local history.   Mayflower first landed in Provincetown on November 9, 1620, and stayed nearly 6 weeks before discovering Plymouth. It was in Provincetown that the Mayflower Compact was written. The monument is the tallest all-granite tower in the United States.                     Had lunch at the 141 Market an organic restaurant in Provincetown. Had some veggie wraps for lunch. Their veggie juices were just too good.                       We left Provincetown around 4:30 pm and headed back to Newport, RI for the night halt. We checked into Motel 6 at Newport, RI. It was already 7 pm by then. We googled and located a Vegan Restaurant in downtown Newport called Raw power juice bar which was about 10 mins drive from the motel. The food was freshly prepared and served piping hot. We ordered Native (Aztec)rice bowl and Falafel/veggie wrapped in tomato basil tortilla. Both were large servings and very filling. We resolved to return next day for breakfast and lunch.   Aztec rice bowl was made with brown rice stir-fried with tomatoes, onion, peppers, black beans, and corn-fused with cilantro dressing and mild sauce then topped with avocado, cilantro, and chia.     July 15th   Woke up early. The Raw Power juice bar opened only at 9:30. We went to the Newport Visitor’s Center. We parked there and bought tickets for 5 mansions for $30 each and also an all-day pass on the RIPTA local city bus transport system. We had coffee at the snack bar in the Visitor’s Center. We went out to catch the trolley. The brochure lists the mansions by popularity. We picked The Elms and The Breakers first.  We saw both mansions using the trolley transport along Bellevue Ave in the historic district.  All the mansions are lined up along Bellevue Ave and all are beachfront property.   The first stop on the trolley tour was the Elm mansion. The Elms was the summer residence of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Julius Berwind of Philadelphia and New York. Mr. Berwind made his fortune in the coal industry. In 1898, the Berwinds engaged Philadelphia architect Horace Trumbauer to design a house modeled after the mid-18th century French Chateau d’Asnieres (c.1750) outside Paris. We are provided headsets with guided audio descriptions of the displays in the rooms and navigation instructions through the mansion’s various rooms.                                                         We took the trolley to the next mansion- the Breakers. The Breakers is the grandest of Newport’s summer “cottages” and a symbol of the Vanderbilt family’s social and financial prominence in the turn of the century America. Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877) established the family fortune in steamships and later in the New York Central Railroad, which was a pivotal development in the industrial growth of the nation during the late 19th century. The commodore’s grandson Cornelius Vanderbilt 11 became the Chairman and President of the New York Central Railroad system in 1885 and purchased a wooden house called The Breakers in Newport during that same year. In 1893, he commissioned architect Richard Morris Hunt to design a villa to replace the earlier wood-framed house which was destroyed by fire the previous year. Hunt directed an international team of craftsmen and artisans to create a 70-room Italian Renaissance-style palazzo inspired by the 16th-century palaces of Genoa and Turin. CNN’s Anderson Cooper’s maternal great, great, great grandfather was business magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt. It makes me wonder, “Does Anderson visit and stay at these mansions belonging to his family or does he even have to work for a living?”   This a more elaborate mansion compared to the Elms with a beautiful view of the ocean on the back side which abuts the beach.  The Breakers also offered a separate Servants Tour for an additional ticket which we skipped due to time constraints. One of the tour guides there indicated that people who took it mentioned about its similarity to the British show Downton Abbey series on TV.                                                             After that, we decided to break for lunch and took the trolley back to the Visitor Center.  The trolley went past Broadway Street where “Raw Power” was and so we got off near there. We again ordered the other rice dish with pineapple and veggies sautéed and a veggie wrap this time with a spinach tortilla. We also ordered an additional crunchy wrap to go for dinner later that night. Between the pineapple and the Aztec bowls, the Aztec Bowl is the winner. We went back to the visitor center and picked up our car so we could finish the mansions and head on to Stamford for the night halt. Four hours of walking through the first two mansions were a bit hard on our legs.   We drove to Rosecliff mansion along Bellevue Ave. Parking for all the mansions is usually free and located beside each mansion on their grounds. Rosecliff mansion was commissioned by Nevada silver heiress Theresa Fair Oelrichs in 1899, architect Stanford White modeled Rosecliff after the Grand Trianon, the garden retreat of French kings at Versailles. Unlike the others, this mansion also boasts some beautiful grounds and rose gardens. Once again beachfront property with a good ocean view. Elms was the smallest of the mansions we visited but nevertheless decorated in a rich and lavish style comparable to other mansions of that gilded era.                                                                     The fourth mansion we visited was the Marble House. Parking was across the road from the mansion. This again belonging to the Vanderbilts was built by the younger brother of Claudius Vanderbilt. Marble House was built between 1888 and 1892 for Mr. and Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt. For all its lavishness it was merely a summer house, or “cottage”, as Newporters called them in remembrance of the modest houses of the early 19th century for the wealthier of that era. This one was huge compared to the other  Vanderbilt mansion. Made for most parts of Italian marble hence its name. Beautiful view of the ocean.  The fifty-room mansion required a staff of 36 servants, including butlers.                                           Chinese teahouse of the Marble house                 Hunter House was another exclusive mansion with its own $30 ticket purchase and we skipped that one due to lack of time. Most mansions are open from 9 am to 5 pm for the day.   We drove over to Fort Adams to tour the fortress but found that it closes at 4 pm. We missed the tour and a tunnel.             We drove to Stamford and checked into a Super 8 motel. This hotel was very busy with tourists and once again run by Indian owners which are good as they usually have tea in the lobby in the mornings.   July 16th:     We managed to call AA and get the flight changed since they delayed our flight by 2 hrs. at Laguardia Airport. We were able to rebook a different direct flight from JFK to PHX. We left very early to avoid traffic driving to NY.  There was a likelihood of thunderstorms in Atlanta, and not sure whether the connecting flights were operating. Since we had some extra time, we drove around to Flushing Meadows to see the tennis championship courts. We could only drive around. Reached JFK well ahead of time before boarding. The total driving time from Stamford to JFK on Saturday morning with moderate traffic was less than an hour. You can take longer non-toll roads which would take about 1.5 hrs.  Met my friend from Phoenix who was traveling on the same flight. Reached Phoenix by 4 pm and took an Uber x to our home. Yes, now regular Uber x can be ordered from the airport upon arrival.