"Please Don't Break Anything at the Breakers!"

On our way from Boston to Philadelphia, we stopped in Newport, Rhode Island. I wanted to show the kids some places that were special to me back in the day, and we toured Cornelius Vanderbilt's summer cottage, the Breakers. This 70-room tribute to his own money was spectacularly unimpressive to me and child Number 2.

First, everything was just way too much. Way too big. You live in a house like that and you get lonely. Which might explain his and her master bedrooms. Second, the tour was the dullest hour of our entire vacation. Our young tour guide had her script well memorized, but it divulged absolutely nothing about the owners. It was all about Louis XIV this and Victorian that.

I tried to ask a few questions, looking for anecdotes, but our guide was hopeless. Afterwards, Mother (my really hilarious Wanders Blog nickname for my wife) and I came up with a list of questions we wished they'd answered but seemed to have no interest in: What was the Vanderbilt's favorite charity? Who did they hate? Anything embarrassing happen at their parties?

The sad thing was, despite all that money, most of them died pretty young or untimely. So in the end, the money didn't really make that much of a difference.