Portsmouth, NH!!!

Jim and I spent a spontaneous day in Portsmouth, NH last weekend! This is one of those perfect New England seaside towns with great food, fun pubs, tons of culture, beautiful flowers, lots of history and much, much more!

We started our day of at a whimsical place called the Friendly Toast. This restaurant is covered with vintage memorabilia! The diverse menu caters to everyone and includes breakfast all day too (love that)! Their sweet potato fries are amazing! They have many vegetarian options which makes me happy!

This object was floating in the upper corner of the restaurant. There were other creepy large plastic boys strewn about.

The back of this booth is covered in vintage prints. It appeared all the seating was vintage too!

It turns out there is one of these restaurants in Cambridge, MA too which we will need to check out!

After some nourishment, Jim got a little silly!

We strolled around the city. One stop was the Portsmouth Brewery which was celebrating its 20th anniversary.

I had a lovely summer ale and Jim had a dark brew which I did not care for.

We walked the perimeter of Strawberry Banke. This 10 acre museum has perserved old homes/buildings, keeping it a village like it would have been around late 1700s.

Actors are within the homes explaining lifestyles and demonstrating cooking and gardening activities of long ago (well, long ago in American eyes).

We did not go in the museum grounds but I remember going as a child on a school fieldtrip and being fascinated. The simple ways of life back then have always intrigued me! Life is so complicated now with an overwhelming amount of stimulus from crazy world happenings to reliability on technology!!!

We walked by the oldest home in New England, circa 1702! It is actually on the market. What a neat home that would be to own!!! It had been built by the Richard Wibird, an officer in the British Royal Navy, a merchant, a member of The King's Council and a benefactor of Harvard College.

We also stopped at the Gaslight. This pub has an outdoor patio. A talented man was on stage....just him and his guitar performing many current hits with is own spin on them! We enjoyed DELICIOUS blueberry beer which is from the Sea Dog Brewery of Maine.

We walked the 10 acre Prescott Park and approached this beautiful formal garden. A nice man kindly offered to take our photo for us!

Love the Japanese crabapple trees! The 3 fountains in here make it a perfect spot!



We checked out this 2 year old Street a.k.a. Museum which had deep, dark art within!

The neat part of this museum was that it included actual street art throughout the city which you could look up on a map. Here are some that we found. Next time we will have to find the rest of the artwork!



Pretty flowers by the sidewalk. I believe these were on someone's private property but since they were so perfect and huge, I had to take photos!!!


So we LOVE this city and plan on a 2 night stay in July. It will be romantic and fun since we will get to check out the nightlife and not worry about driving!

Have a wonderful week! We have finally started having summer-like weather in New England so hopefully it continues. ~Val