Surprisingly Intact

My Wife in Portsmouth

A Saturday sent down range in the port city of Portsmouth turned out to be even more fun than imagined and I have a very vivid imagination. My wife and I started out the day wandering into town from our hotel in search of breakfast at a place our favorite son and the ABFA had taken us to – Radici’s. We found it no longer served breakfast but there was a very busy place called The Friendly Toast right across the street which turned out to be a great alternative.

Real Estate Search

We sat right by the window and watched Portsmouth wake up and we were soon deluged with a young crowd and a bevy of babies. This seems to be a spot young mothers gather on Saturday morning to share. While we were sitting there one of my son’s best friends walked by with his fiancé but the doorway was chocked with the aforementioned crowd so we let them pass in peace.

Stylin in the Center of Town

After breakfast we did some more wandering and I’ve got to be honest, the ABFA inspired plan to have us buy a place up here instead of my hometown is a notion growing on me. It’s already taken full root in my wife who made a bee line to some local realtors office to check out their offerings. After spending a couple days here Portsmouth is definitely a place I could live.

That notion was cemented when our son joined our group from lunch at the British Beer Company. He fit right in and served as our guide to Portsmouth for the rest of the afternoon. After a hearty lunch and a couple Monty Python Holy Grail Ales my wife and a couple of the ladies left us so they could assault the Kittery Outlet mall. Left to our own devices we went pub crawling (of course).

My Son with the Crowd at Earth Eagle

We started out at the Earth Eagle Brewery which has grown significantly over the last year, more than doubling their garage space. It was a little too brisk to spend the sunny day on the decks so we opted for the rest of the afternoon in the upstairs loft of Fat Belly’s with its signature ice bar to keep beers cool while awaiting execution.

The bar tendress was a very cute young UNH graduate which provided one of the highlights of the day when she zapped my son with his first ever feeling of being old. We were discussing people they both might know since their shared alma mater. They finally arrived at one but the gal mentioned she was in fifth grade when that person attended college with my son. Boy, if he’s getting old, what does that do to me!

At Fat Belly's Ice Bar

My son had to depart late in the afternoon to reunite with the ABFA and we started receiving reports of the return of the shopping expedition. We talked them into Fat Belly’s just in time for our dinner reservations at the River House where we also took in the Kentucky Derby.

We ended the night back at the hotel bar retelling a lot of the tales of our adventures on a Saturday afternoon extraordinarily well spent. Yeah, I could live in Portsmouth.

River House for the Derby