I am on a writing break and have been taking the time to share some of my favorites from the More to Come archives. However, this new post — which consists of a few words and some pictures — is of a personal nature that I wanted to share in a timely fashion.

Providence, Rhode Island, is one of the country’s underappreciated gems. We arrived by train last evening in order to hear our son, Andrew Bearden Brown, sing the role of the Evangelist tomorrow afternoon in the St. John Passion with the Schola Cantorum of Boston and the Providence Baroque Orchestra. Very cool!

UPDATE: Andrew did a fantastic job and received a rousing ovation at the end of the concert!

As is my habit in the morning, I woke up early, stretched, and then took to the streets of downtown Providence. The city is very walkable — Candice and I walked from the train station to our hotel last evening — with great architecture all around. Thanks to the work of preservationists, city government, business leaders, and others, downtown has had a renaissance. On this trip I saw more early-morning dog walkers, which suggests that downtown living is growing in popularity, and some of the empty parking lots have been filled in with new infill construction. Updated with more pictures after we took a self-guided walking tour of downtown mid-day.

And did I mention that Providence is one of the great food cities in America? Forbes magazine once called it the country’s best food city per capita, and we agree. In our first 15 hours in town, we’ll have eaten two great meals (at North and at Ellie’s) and tonight we have reservations at one of our favorite Providence restaurants, Gracie’s.

As I said…an underappreciated gem.

More to come…

DJB