Day 145 - Portsmouth, NH

We left the hotel in Portland on a cold and drizzling morning reminding us of our weather in the UK. We popped into The Holy Doughnut to pick up some mash potato doughnuts and were surprised by the number of tourists in town, many of them German. As we drove past the port we saw 3 cruise ships in and one of them was German. No wonder there were so many tourists in town!

We ate the doughnuts over the next couple of days and they were lovely, a little denser than non-mash doughnuts but still with the doughnut texture and sweetness.

We headed back onto Highway 1 and headed down the coast to our next destination, Portsmouth!

New England is great at confusing us British people, a number of the towns are named after British towns. Portsmouth, Newport, Bristol, Dover, just to name a few but these towns are nothing like their UK counterparts and geographically, are located in the wrong position to each other. It was nice to be on a small road driving through little villages and countryside.

We pulled into Portsmouth just as the sun came out. Tonight we were staying at an AirBnB in the historic port district, our first AirBnB so far in this trip.

Our AirBnB was at Vernon's place, a lovely historic house with three cats and a penthouse all to ourselves.

We walked from Vernon's along the waterfront to the town center. One similarity this Portsmouth has with the one back home is that they’re both Naval Shipyards only this one maintains nuclear attack submarines.

When we first hit what we thought was the Main Street, we started to get a little worried, there were a dozen or so shops and one restaurant. We’d started to discuss what else we could do today when we turned a corner and saw the actual town center, it was bustling, filled with shops selling gifts, clothes, accessories, home items and various food products. There were plenty of varied cafes, bars and restaurants, almost too many to choose from. It felt like a town center back home, we hadn’t seen anything like this so far in our trip but maybe this is a sign of what’s to come as we head down the east coast.

After taking a walk around town and checking out a few of the shops, we headed for dinner at Thai restaurant called 5 Thai. We shared the Spicy Chicken Wings to start and then Lee had Crab Fried Rice and I had Garlic Fish. The food was awesome and we were both very full. We waddled around town a little more, stopping off at a couple of bars so I could beat Lee at cards before heading to an Irish bar for an Irish Coffee. This bar used to be a bank and we enjoyed sitting next to the old vault and under a huge dome people watching whilst we finished our drinks.

On our way back to Vernon's house, we decided to have a night cap in the Rusty Hammer. Here we sat at the bar and got chatting to David. Our night cap turned into a late-night-cap as we enjoyed chatting to him so much and before we knew it, it was getting very late and we didn't want to disturb Vernon too much by walking in during the early hours of the morning.

We headed back and were welcomed by Lucy the cat who was keeping our bed warm. She stayed with us all night for strokes, cuddles and lots of purrs. It was her bed really, we were just the human slaves rewarded for all the attention by being allowed to sleep on a small corner of it.