AUGUST 12

Last night Dan and I drove up to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and found a small (crappy) motel to sleep at in order to make the most of today. Originally we had planned to drive to the White Mountains of N.H. for a nice long, high hike, but there has just been too much rain, and it would have been a gamble to drive there and hope for some sun. Instead, Dan thought it would be fun to show me some of the historic towns north of Boston and do the more traditional tourist stuff.

Portsmouth was a lovely town. It was fun to see how many of the homes were built in the early 1700s. We ventured through a bit of a historic park, Strawberry Banke, that shows some of the original layout of the town, along with narrations of various peoples' lives (shipbuilders, town leaders, teachers, etc).

The waterfront around the town caters to everything from small personal watercraft to enormous freight barges. There is also a naval shipyard here (NAVSEA), where one of Dan's friends used to work, helping to maintain nuclear submarines.

We wandered around some beautiful parks and gardens, then headed towards the cutesy downtown shopping area. Portsmouth has some great restaurants, bars, coffee shops and boutiques. If the homes weren't extremely high priced it would be a fantastic place to live, situated between great cities, mountains with hiking and skiing, and an ocean where the surfing is quite good (so I hear...obviously a wet suit is required at almost all times. At this point just splashing around at the edge of the water is ok with me).

We ate lunch at a funky joint Dan used to frequent- The Friendly Toast- where I had a New England version of huevos rancheros.

As we explored the town a bit more I found an amazing fabric shop. I was ready to buy up the entire store (then realized I do not own a sewing machine, and doing things by hand may take more than the rest of my life). I limited myself to about 1.5 yds of some lovely contemporary florals and am committed to making some pillow covers when I get back. http://www.portsmouthfabric.com/

We ended with the town square - couldn't pass up the traditional white steepled church.

After leaving Portsmouth we hit a few more destinations. The first was an old fort along the coast that civilians built in order to protect their homes during the revolutionary war.

Dan then took me across the state border into Kittery Maine, and on up the coast to a few different beach towns. We stopped here and there, looking at the surf and poking our feet in the sand.

As we headed back down the interstate we stopped in Hampton to pop in on the cabinet-maker Dan used to work for.

Our last stop was Newburyport, MA. It was another very lovely town with a white-steepled church and curving brick streets. We ate dinner at a Nepali restaurant and then proceeded to drive back through Boston to Norwell (hitting horrendous traffic- even at 10pm).