Come on a Safari with Me

They each lift their glass of wine and sip or gulp or sniff. Someone eats a cracker. Someone tells a story. Someone else is watching it all happen, shifting from one foot to the other, excited to spend a day outside herself. They take their Greenvale Vineyard glasses as they leave the tasting house and someone sets a bottle on a picnic table. Instead of a blanket, they cover the table in fist-sized strawberries, cut-up melon, jars of honey peanut butter and Nutella spread, hummus and pita chips and white or garlic bread. Pretzel bags. Paper plates and aqua napkins. Laughter. Talk of circus children and missing trash cans. Later, they find a local beach at the end of a road, with a changing house that smells of cigarettes and wet sand. An ice cream truck serenades them with “Happy Birthday to You” and someone looks over at the birthday girl and they walk toward the coast, chocolate eclair bars melting in the afternoon sun. 

This was just the start of my friend’s birthday trip to Rhode Island and its wine-specialized city of Newport. There were four of us: me, Saniya, Jen, and Kaitlyn, the birthday girl. After picnicking at Greenvale Vineyards in Portsmouth, we went to a local beach then headed to Newport Vineyards. We finished off most of the fruit, bought more bottles to take home with us and then drove down Bellevue Avenue to look at the mansions, and down Ocean Drive to hunt for miniature shells and take photos on the shore. It was a splendid day, and in true Boston fashion, ended with a hunt for Dunkin’ Donuts.

I’ve decided to share a makeshift summer mixtape (or mixMP3list) to get you through those hour-long drives to Rhode Island or wherever else the road may take you: