There’s Just Something About a Small Coastal Town

Written By : Hannah Corbett

This weekend, I went to Newport, Rhode Island for the very first time.
And like any proper romantic, I’m already planning my return.

I always thought coastal towns were for beach towels, flip-flops, and SPF 50. But this trip proved me wrong. In fact, I didn’t even have a beach day.

Instead, I slipped into something else entirely: a slower version of myself. One who strolls down cobblestone streets with a cappuccino in hand, pauses in front of antique stores just to admire the doorknobs, and imagines what it’d be like to host a dinner party in a 1906 mansion with gilded mirrors and a piano no one really knows how to play.

It wasn’t just the town that enchanted me. It was who I got to be while I was in it. I wore linen and stripes. Tied sweaters over my shoulders like someone who plays tennis on the regular.

We spend so much time trying to find ourselves. But sometimes, the best way to do that is to go somewhere new. And there’s no better place than a town that looks like it could be a postcard, a period film, or the setting of your next great rewrite.

On Tuesday, I spent three hours on a sailboat—skimming past centuries of history, flying by lighthouses and coastlines that felt too perfect to be real. The sun hit my skin like it had been waiting all summer and the water sparkled the kind of way I’ve only seen on pinterest. And for a moment, I forgot that I was leaving that day.

Because when you're out there, wind in your hair and no phone service, I realized that you don’t always have to know where you’re going.

So as I walked past mansions with names, restaurants with handwritten menus, and sidewalks that told stories in cracks and creaks, I couldn’t help but wonder:

Do we go to small towns to escape our lives—
or to imagine new ones entirely?