Providence is the sort of city that rewards an early start and a loose plan. Roger Williams founded it in 1636 after being banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the idea he built it on, freedom of conscience, shaped the whole of Rhode Island. The city grew rich on shipping, jewelry and machine tools, and the result is a compact downtown of brick mills, church spires and one of the biggest marble domes in the country on the State House, which you can see from the highway as you approach.
For a rider, the city is a place to begin or end, not to cruise. Interstate 95 splits it, the one-way streets near the river confuse everyone once, and weekday rush hours are slow. Come on a Sunday morning and everything flows: you can roll down Benefit Street, the old colonial lane known as the Mile of History, past clapboard houses stacked up the hill above the river, and be out on the open roads in twenty minutes. Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design give the east side its student-town feel, and the writer H. P. Lovecraft spent his whole life here, which explains some of the atmosphere on a foggy night.
Food is a strong argument for lingering. Federal Hill is the Italian neighborhood, with bakeries and old restaurants along Atwells Avenue, and Rhode Island has its own odd specialties worth ordering: coffee milk, a clam-cake-and-chowder tradition on the coast, and the thin, crisp pizza strips you find in bakeries. In summer and autumn, WaterFire sets braziers burning on the downtown rivers on selected evenings, a spectacle that has become the city's signature.
From here the road splits into easy options. Southeast, Route 114 runs down the East Bay to Bristol and its Fourth of July parade, the oldest in the country, while north the Blackstone River Valley leads through old mill villages that powered American industry. Fuel, food and parking are never hard to find in Providence, and the ride out to either side lands you in quiet farmland and water views within half an hour.