My husband and I will be traveling to New England in a few weeks. We are flying into Providence and would like to visit the mansions of Newport. Is there anything interesting in Providence or should we concentrate on Newport? We thought about staying in Providence to be close to the airport and enjoy the historical areas they may have. We have about 36 hours (including sleep) in this area.

Thanks for your help.

Providence is an interesting small city but Newport is something unique. I would spend most of my time in Newport. If you want to spend less on accomodations, you can stay near the airport (quite a few decent hotels, much less expensive than Newport) and drive to Newport . It should take about an hour and there are some nice small towns along the way like Wickford and Narragansett.
If you do spend some time in Providence, you can check out the museum at RISD and the Italian restaurants and shops in the Federal Hill area.

How does your 36 hours break down? If you are arriving late afternoon you can go into Providence for a couple hours, then go back to airport area to sleep, then spend the whole next day in Newport, and head back to airport hotel

We are driving from Bar Harbor area (probably leaving around 8 am on Thursday 10/1. Is the drive around 7 hrs? So we'll be tired that day I'm sure. We'll have the entire next day and our flight leaves Providence around 2 p.m. on Saturday. We love old Italian restaurants, so the Federal Hill area sounds good.

The airport is not in Providence, it is about 20 minutes away from the city in Warwick. It is a compact, easy airport to get in and out of, though.

That is a looooong drive from Bar Harbor to Providence, especially if you take the scenic route (brings back not-so-great memories of a family summer vacation in my youth ). I would stay right in Providence, have dinner there on Thursday night, and see Newport as a day trip from your Providence hotel on Friday. You could then explore the East Side near Brown/RISD on Saturday morning before heading off to Warwick for your flight. I would not stay in a PVD airport hotel unless I had a flight arriving very late or leaving very early.

Thank you so very much... you've been most helpful.