Recently, I spent a beautiful weekend in Newport, Rhode Island for one of my dear friend’s bachelorette parties. If you haven’t been or if you wish to revisit, we should go together. It’s an adorable little boating town and I got a good taste of it, but I want more. One of my favorite items on the weekend’s agenda was a Lighthouses and Mimosas Tour with Classic Cruises of Newport.

For just $25 a ticket, we were loaded on to the Rum Runner II, a ship that’s almost as old as the Wonder Wheel on Coney Island, for an hour and a half, with unlimited mimosas and croissants. The crew on board regaled us with stories not only of lighthouses but of many of the mansions and boats we passed along the way. I loved every minute of it. The scenery was gorgeous and the breeze was perfect for a morning after a night of celebrating.

One of my favorite stories was about an amazing party thrown by the Vanderbilt-owned “The Breakers” mansion back in the day. The guests of the party thought it strange and quite tacky that the centerpieces were sandboxes, until the end of the night when the host said the guests could dig within the sandboxes and keep whatever they found – which included rubies and diamonds. These people bled money, and some of them still do today. For example, along our trip we passed several yachts almost the size of football fields, one of which we were told has a grand piano on board – because of course it does.

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