Continuing the tour of Ivy League schools, an unplanned bonus of touring the New England states, we visited the campus of Brown University today. Our plan was to spend a good portion of the day seeing Providence, and Brown just happened to be right there in town.

Having seen Harvard (and M.I.T.) when I was in Boston with my mom, I was impressed with the beauty of the campus, and Brown has a reputation that matches.

Cornell was a pretty campus in Ithaca, so I figured I was on a roll. Besides, depending on how our drive south progresses on Monday, Yale is on the list to see as we pass through New Haven, Connecticut.

Today’s stroll through Brown was lovely. We had the campus to ourselves since today was a Saturday, and the school year had already concluded. The campus was quiet and serene, and full of beautiful old buildings.

We continued our self-guided walking tour through the hilly streets of the eastern part of Providence just east of the river, and then crossed the river to see the state capitol. For such a small state, Rhode Island’s capitol building sure is huge!

One thing missing from this capitol building, though, was a gold dome. Have you ever wondered why some state capitols have gold domes and others don’t? Bruce and I learned on our walking tour of Boston some years back that the only states that have gold domes are ones where a past president was born in that state. Poor Rhode Island. As long as there aren’t any Rhode Island-born presidents (and I doubt there ever will be), their state capitol will remain plain.

This evening, we kicked back at a local pub, Shannon View Inn (highly ranked on Trip Advisor) to enjoy great pub food and taste a local brew, Narragonsett Lager, which was fabulous.

We had forgotten this was the evening of the Belmont Stakes, and we arrived just in time to watch history being made. For the first time since I had completed my junior year of high school in 1978, today’s winner won the Triple Crown of horse racing (Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes). American Pharoah and Victor Espinoza were the champions, and it was fun to see his exuberant joy after Victor victoriously crossed the finish.