Portsmouth, NH and Maine

We decided to book another night at our Portsmouth, NH hotel because we like it and if we stay here versus Maine, we'll be an hour closer for our looong drive tomorrow!

This was supposed to be a big day for me - we were going to visit the Shaker Village and museum, which I have been looking forward to for almost a year. I hadn't thought to check the website until this morning, but when I did, I discovered they start their open season Memorial Day. I was really upset and sad. Dan tried to keep my spirits up and we drove in the rain to Shaker Village anyway. We found it and drove near it to take some pictures. It's really beautiful and I'm trying to stay positive by telling myself I WILL come back there again!

We headed to Portland Maine to do some shopping and eat lunch at the Green Elephant (lots of green animals here!). The menu here is all vegan and vegetarian! That was pretty nice. I got a really great hot and sour soup and a ginger beer.

The stores were really cute and I bought a skirt and two dresses from resale shops. I've really gotten into tropical prints lately. Is there such thing as too tropical? Hm, maybe in Wisconsin. Oh well.

It was misting rain all day long and I think we might have wandered more in Portland if the weather were nicer, but I still feel like we got a great taste of the place.

On our way back we drove around York, which is a really cute touristy town. It reminded me of an old fashioned boardwalk. We also were reminded of how glad we are that we're here just before tourist season starts! These places would be cah-razy in the summertime!

York is where we found a great place to park and take a walk near the ocean. The rainy, windy day made the ocean really beautiful.

 After freshening up for dinner we drove into Portsmouth to The Friendly Toast. The decor was SO awesome and I wanted to take a bunch of stuff home with me! I ordered the Granny Melt - swiss, cheddar, apple slices and brown sugar carmelized onions on a croissant. It was heavenly as was my side of onion rings. I also ordered a mint cocoa. It came with a CUP of marshmallows and a BOWL of the most delicious whipped cream. So tasty.

Now we rest up for the long drive tomorrow. We're going to stay someplace outside of Pittsburgh.

Portsmouth, NH

After grabbing a bite at the hotel's complimentary breakfast we hit the road to Portsmouth, NH. When we ate at Myers & Chang our waitress gave us some great recommendations and our first stop was one such. Strawberry Banke Museum has 42 buildings representing the span from 1695 to 1950. There are houses to tour inside, pretty gardens, and a WWII era grocery store.

 Pretty fancy dog house!

Here is the WWII era grocery store exhibit. It was so cool!

One of the houses had a demonstration of hearth cooking. The guide, Joe was super knowledgeable, entertaining and talked about food and cooking in general during colonial times. That was probably my favorite place there. Here he is making Indian slapjacks. You can see the chicken on the string in the back. It was kind of like a colonial rotisserie. You wind the string from the top down and let it go and do this about every 5-10 minutes.

We also visited an early Masonic Lodge and museum in one of the buildings.

There were a few actors dressed up in Colonial clothes that you could talk to. I was nervous to talk to them for some reason but we did chat with one lady and it wasn't so bad.

I want this bedding:

Where wooden casks, buckets and barrels are made. We missed the demonstration but it still looked cool.

We wandered around for many hours here and it was definitely a highlight. We had worked up an appetite so we got sandwiches at The Works coffee shop downtown. Really good food and all natural stuff, too. We stopped in a few shops in that area and I bought a cute top at a resale store (no sales tax here!).

Then we drove to our hotel, Port Inn. I was a little nervous about the motel-style - you can drive your car right to your hotel door, but this is way nicer than a lot of the places we've stayed in. They have a really nice outdoor pool but it is way too cold here today (mid 50s).

We have relied heavily on www.yelp.com to research restaurants and destinations for this trip. Our dinner selection was no exception - The Green Monkey. I had the pad Thai (big surprise) but it was unlike any pad Thai I have had before. It was different but good and the tofu was prepared nicely. I had a rhubarb mojito with it and it was awesome! Dan got the macadamia nut encrusted mahi mahi with papaya buerre blanc and tahitian vanilla bean risotto (kind of reminded of us rice Krispie treats!). He had a white sangria with that and I loved it, too. I think I would much prefer a white sangria to a red because that's how I prefer wine in general.

Oh! And then Dan ordered a bluberry lemonade drink. It had blueberry stoli and blueberry puree. It was delicious! It came with a little monkey hanging off the edge of the glass.

Finally, we split the fresh rhubarb trifle (rhubarb is in season!): layer of cake, whipped cream, rhubarb custard, sandy pistachio cookie. This was a really memorable meal and I'm so glad we found this place.