We took a road trip (20 minutes for us) to Portsmouth, NH earlier today.  Portsmouth is a port city, one of about a half dozen sea coastal towns on the less than 20 miles of New Hampshire’s Atlantic seacoast, and we had a blast!. 

This is just a taste of Portsmouth – our couple of hours wandering around town.

Sitting at the mouth of the Piscataqua River, Portsmouth has long been known as a ship building center. The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard has been here since 1800 and shipbuilding in this town preceded that (John Paul Jones lived here in the late 1700’s).  This is clearly a town with a rich history.

But we weren’t going to Portsmouth to build a boat; we were going for lunch, and enjoy a walk around town.

If you haven’t been to Portsmouth in a while, or if you have never been, this is a really cool town; pretty easy parking right downtown on the street, at least this time of year. Once you are out on your sneakers, you would be hard pressed to turn left or right and not find a really interesting restaurant, café or bakery. 

We had lunch at a Himalayan restaurant called the Dunbar Square Restaurant.  You have probably had Himalayan food, but we had not, and so this seemed like the day.  Booyeah! This place was great!

Really cute, and with fabulous service, we enjoyed Mo-Mo’s as an appetizer (think dumplings – we had lamb and paneer/spinach), which were excellent.

For the main meal I had Wild Boar Ribs (Karen calls me her Wild Bore), pictured below – the Wild Boar, that is.  Awesome. And Karen had the Lamb Chili – also excellent.  This place was a home run!

But there are a host of other restaurants and cafes nearby, most of those we saw had mostly excellent reviews, that we look forward to trying some other time.

We walked off our meal wandering around town.  This is a VERY walkable and enjoyable town!  We explored areas such as Market Square, Strawberry Banke, and Prescott Park. Obviously there is much more to see, but this was our glimpse in a few hours wandering around, and we started in the square itself..

Obviously, not all the homes in Portsmouth are like these, but there are a lot of them – and these Colonial, Federalist, and Georgian style homes are fabulous!  Most of those pictured date from the early 1800’s.

With the town being a port city, the shore line along the Piscataqua River is gorgeous as well, with a wide array of (largely) working boats.  The tidal reach up the Piscataqua River is 13 miles, so as you might imagine the tide is extremely strong on this river – either upstream or down depending on the tide.

After our walk, we found our way back to Market Square and the Elephantine Bakery, to pick up some croissants to go, and shared a macadamia nut cookie there.  You know when you take a first bite of something, and know instantly that it is really special?  Well, that was this cookie.  OMG.  Since then we have both had our croissants – and very simply, they are to die for.  We also bought a loaf of whole grain bread that I have no doubt will be awesome. Don’t miss this place if you visit! BTW, we didn’t know about this place beforehand; a customer came out just raving.  I see why!

Anyway, just a taste of Portsmouth.  Make your plans and get to this town before the word gets out!  Between both of my readers, this town will get booked up fast!