Jane and I cap off Thanksgiving weekend with a two-night getaway to Providence, RI. We intentionally take the commuter rail to get a little public transit practice in before Jordan’s big December trip to California - as well as because the little man is on a trucks-and-trains tear right now, and it’ll be his first riding a train bigger than the T. We book a hotel room on the edge of Providence’s Financial District, just a few blocks from the train station, and spend two days walking around the downtown area, eating the hotel breakfast multiple times each morning, getting some precious time in at the hotel fitness center (me) and savoring the availability of television and relaxed screentime rules (Jordan and Jane). On Sunday (our full day in town), we take a morning stroll up College Hill to walk around the Brown and RISD campuses, taking some pretty photos with the last of the fall’s foliage; after Jordan’s nap, we walk to the nearby Providence Place shopping mall, where we dine at the food court, and Jordan has fun riding an escalator for the first time, running up and down wheelchair ramps, and pretending to be a Paw Patrol helicopter while sitting in a push car. After each night’s early sunset (just after 4 PM), I take a stroll around downtown, trying my hand at nighttime cityscapes, and bringing home dinner from the nearby Maruichi Japanese Food & Deli. Then, it’s back to Boston on Monday morning - our little budding traveler enjoy every second of our frigid walk home from the comfort of his bundled-up stroller muff, with only his eyes and a little patch of his upper face showing (“It’s his expression square,” I tell Jane while imitating the latest tiny wrinkled eye or furrowed brow visible on Jordan).
