Happy Tax-Free Weekend!!!

In Massachusetts, it's tax-free weekend. For two days you can buy anything you want (up to $2,500) without paying 5% sales tax. So you can imagine how crowded stores in the Bay State will get this weekend. And today I really needed to go out and buy some new clothes, which is why I headed out of the state to Providence, Rhode Island to do my shopping. For one thing, clothes in both Massachusetts and Rhode Island are tax-free, because they are considered necessities. And since a lot of Rhode Islanders probably headed north to go buy some stuff tax-free, I thought I'd take advantage of shopping at a Rhode Island mall which would probably have considerably less traffic than a Massachusetts one. I went to the Providence Place mall which was as busy as it would be on a weekday. It was so easy to find a parking spot and getting in and out of stores was a breeze.

After going to Providence, I headed down south to Newport (again! I just love that town), to go see my mom's friend's sister's new restaurant. It's called La Baranda (which means "The Border") and it serves Latin-American cuisine. It was very small and quaint. Almost everyone spoke Spanish and the food was very authentic. It felt like I had walked through a portal into a restaurant in South America. I completely forgot I was in posh Newport. I had a really good beef stew with rice and sweet plantains. My mother had lightly fried fish with picked onions, kidney beans and rice. And we shared a plate of complimentary of fried plantain chips. Very good! Well worth the trip. It was great to get away from the shopping madness of Massachusetts and relax the day away in Rhode Island.