We were in Portsmouth two weeks ago for Sheila's mom's burial at sea and it was a nice, and exceedingly rare, weekend out-of-town. My health is caused us to cancel many, many planned weekends out-of-town over the past four years.
This was our second visit to this historic New England coastal city so we had a pretty good idea of the things we wanted to do. We've always planned to visit this city again and this burial at sea provided us with this opportunity.
On our first night in town, we went for a walk around the downtown area and even walked across the Memorial Bridge into Kittery, Maine. We did the same when we were here the first time about ten years ago and this was something we really wanted to do again especially since the weather was beautiful. This walk was really nice and I ended up with many photos.
As a lifelong student of architecture, I have to say that this city is quite beautiful with a lot of character...
I have a few photos in this blog entry of The North Church of Portsmouth. This church sits prominently in the middle of the downtown area. If I remember correctly, this church has been standing for almost 200 years. This congregation, however, is around 350 years old.
There are relatively narrow alleyways all throughout the downtown area. Some are pedestrian-only alleys such as this one below while others are very narrow roadway alleyways.
Here is the Memorial Bridge that allowed us to walk across into Kittery, Maine.
We chose to book a room right on the waterfront in downtown Portsmouth. The location was great and the "room" wasn't just a room, it was really a small apartment. However, we were originally leaning toward staying on one of these houseboats docked in the photo below.
The marina where these two houseboats are docked is located across the river in Kittery. Actually, the houseboats were directly across the river from our room. As much as we would have loved to have stayed on a houseboat, we decided that we preferred to be a short walking distance to our room from all the restaurants and bars. We had many shops and restaurants right within a block or two of our room. Although I must say that we were able to walk to this marina from downtown Portsmouth in about ten minutes so, in hindsight, that would not have been too far away anyway.
This is Bow Street... aptly named since the curve of the road resembles the bow of a boat. Bow Street was just a half a block from our room.
After our walk around downtown and then across the bridge into Kittery and back again, we went to The River House for some drinks, appetizers and then dinner. Below are Sheila's crabcakes...
This photo below shows Ceres Street from near Bow Street. This is where our room was located. This block is full of art galleries, shops and restaurants. Most of the people in the photo are getting ice cream at Anabelle's.
The South Church is a very distinctive church whose congregation was formed about 300 years ago. This particularly distinctive church that is still standing today is a bit over 200 years old...
And, we're back at the side of The North Church...
This was out behind our room on Ceres Street...
For dinner on our second night in Portsmouth, we had planned to go to one of the more upscale restaurants on Ceres Street next to our room. Unfortunately, we found that we did not bring the clothes necessary for these restaurants on our street so we went back to The River House for a few drinks and dinner.
Normally we do travel with "Smart Casual Attire" but, for some reason, we traveled extremely lightly and a little too casual on this weekend so, instead of dining at a more upscale restaurant, we went back to The River House and had a few drinks while we waited for Whitney, Wayne, Ellie and Will to join us...
It was a bit chilly after we had dinner. Below, Gee is trying to warm up Ellie while Whitney went back to the car to get some sweatshirts...
After dropping our bags off at our car in the parking garage on the morning we were heading back home, we went back to "Popovers On The Square" for breakfast. Here we were treated to popovers loaded with our choice of breakfast sandwich. Personally, I felt the popovers were a bit overbaked but it was good. They also had some really tasty bakery items. Naturally we left with a box of bakery items for the drive back home!
On the way back to the car, we passed by The North Church again...
We had a great time and wish we had more time in this historic city. This city is clean, it has character, and we felt safe the entire time we were here... and that is saying something!
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