Portsmouth

We intended to start our road trip by going up the coast to Portland Maine. And we had targeted having lunch on the way in the northernmost coastal town of New Hampshire, Portsmouth. Now given we hadn't given much more thought to this than where we might eat, we found this a surprisingly agreeable little town. I persuaded Thibault reluctantly to defer lunch to go round the Strawbery Banke Museum (no mis-spelling I assure you). And even Thibault after some initial grumpiness came round to this being a really excellent little museum.It isn't actually that small - as it is a collection of 37 old wooden houses, most meticulously restored. What marks it out is the intelligence of the whole plan. Some houses have been restored to their 18th century pomp when they were the homes of the better off New Englander entrepreneurs. But the district declined until it was a low level slum area in the 1950s. 

What they have done so well is cover all that history. So that while some houses are restored to a chosen period, some are left as skeletons so one can see the fabric of how they were built. Others are devoted to the architecture with displays of how windows and doors were constructed, others have displays of photographs from the end of the areas lifetime as homes for immigrants. One little house even has a display of advertising and posters from the Home Front in the Second World War. Overall it was just an excellent place to spend a couple of hours.

Oh, and if you are wondering about all the flags on the photos below, they marked houses that were open to the public, and the flags vary as to the number of stars depending on when the houses wee built and the number of States in the Union at the time. One even has a Union Jack, having been built in 1695.

We eventually did get lunch at a modern seafood spot called Surf. Which was really just as good as one could hope for as a lunch venue. The lobster sushi we had as starters was particularly delicious. We liked Portsmouth. Certainly a place one could have spent a whole day in earlier in the year when the weather was better and more historic homes were open to the public. But one thing we quickly found out here is that much closes at the end of the season and the end of the season is Mid-October, ie a week before we arrived. On the plus side, we did successfully avoid the crowds.