Today, we drove down to Rhode Island for a little day trip. Our destination: the Roger Williams Botanical Center. The internet told us that New England’s largest indoor garden was to be found here!!! Sweeeet!
Despite giving out dramamine, poor Evie started feeling carsick as we were neared our destination, just 15 minutes away. I have to say, it is so nice that ALL of our children can tell us when they aren’t feeling well. What a beautiful thing. Anyway, when she let us know that she wasn’t feeling great, we decided to make a little pitstop to walk around, and we got gas at the same time. And we ate some snacks…. Cause remember our equation:
snacks + children = sanity x parents
After she was feeling a little better, we drove the last little bit to the botanical center.
After our arrival, you better believe that the first place we headed was the conservatory. That is always a favorite whenever we go to botanical gardens. We love the indoor stuff!
The Conservatory had a lot of really beautiful plants. And some interesting water features as well. I must admit though, it was a lot smaller than we had expected. I think we read “largest in New England” and assumed that it would be on the same level as some of the other amazing gardens that we’ve seen on this nomad year:
*The Atlanta Botanical garden which took not one, but two posts to accommodate all the pictures I took. *U.S. National Botanical Garden.
We still really enjoyed ourselves. In part because in the second part of the Conservatory, in the Mediterranean room, there were budgies. Once the kids realized that, they basically didn’t leave until we moved on to another part of the garden.
One of the parts I really enjoyed was that there was a big section of carnivorous plants. And the man who manages them was there, working. He took a good 15 minutes to tell us all about them and to answer our questions. It was quite fascinating.
We then moved on to the last section of the Greenhouses. It had a nice section with comfy chairs to sit and relax, some kids toys, and the section of edible plants.
After we had seen all there was to see in the Greenhouses, we decided to go check out the rose maze. They had tons of different kinds of roses, and there were some that smelled AMAZING. It was a rather hot day. So we didn’t linger for too long.
We then walked through some of the gardens that had a little more shade on our way back to the car. There were some really lovely plants and trees. We eventually made our way back to the car.
Everyone was feeling pretty hungry, so we decided that lunch was in order. We pulled up the map and saw that there was a Chick Fil A nearby. So, I pulled up the app and started putting in our order while Jonathan started driving.
But the app was being super weird… I couldn’t find the kids meals. And I couldn’t choose certain drinks, etc. It was getting kinda frustrating and so I finally just said “Let’s just go and order when we get there.”
We kept driving. And then our GPS tried to drop us off in an area where there VERY definitely was no Chick Fil A. We were super confused. And then we saw a woman coming out of this building below with a Chick Fil A bag…
After doing some research, we learned that this is a Chick Fil A that deals primarily with catering and delivery orders (Uber eats, Doordash etc.) But they also handle limited takeout orders as well. No dining in available. We think that’s why there was weirdness with the app.
It turns out that there was a full service Chick Fil A just a little further up the road, back toward Boston and so we decided that we would go eat there.
On the way, we got to see the Capitol building. (Ever since we went to Washington DC, the twins have gotten super excited any time they see any sort of building with a cupola.). So this was a highlight as well.
Eventually we made it to Chick Fil A for our early dinner. Of course the food was delicious. Again, we are so happy that there are restaurants that all of our children eat at.
After everyone had gotten their fill of Chicky chicky nug nugs, we made our way back to Boston, where we had a movie night and went to bed.
Yay! Rhode Island! ✔️✔️✔️
