We toured RISD yesterday after tromping up the hill to Brown, seeing the extreme temples of learning and libraries,touring the Brown greenhouse of plant exotica, and viewing the senior textiles and apparel show from RISD. Brown and RISD are both beautiful campuses that live in the ( for us) newly exquisite Providence. RISD was good-- the freshman foundation program is solid, the problem/ solution approach is good but it really didn't drastically stand out as much as the school's reputation sets it heads and shoulders above everybody else. Our tour guides were not impressive-- ditsy and vacuous--though I will not base my impressions of the student body on those two. Great art supply shop-- though the selection and volume of book choices were sadly limited. RISD now offers an extremely limited dual degree program with Brown (only 18 students last yr)-- the whole attractiveness of " bio at Brown" kind of means one or two classes.

After our time on the campuses -- complete with full blown daffodils, magnolia trees, forsythias and budding cherries, we went to the Apple store to have Alex's iPod fixed. They replaced it. Phew!

Dinner was thanks to Yelp! A website / iPhone app which I have that is about rating and adding local restaurants, stores etc.for others -- and you can select/ find places that are close to you. We went to Tacquiria Pacifica which was a few blocks from our 4 star hotel accomodations (thx to hotwire). This order at the counter place had great, inexpensive food ( the fish tacos hands down looked like the winner of the evening-- Alex had 3!) with a bar on the other side of the room if you wanted drinks. This place supported the AAS220-- an arts community outreach, galleries and events( with studios, housing -- even a letterpress shop for members. There was a live band ( with one of the featured instruments being a tuba!) and a way groovy group of artist / cool folks eating and hanging out. Cassetti dug it "word, dog" as he is quick to confirm.