Among the many things that I learned this weekend, and it turned out to be a real learnin’ time, I found out that Portsmouth was originally called Strawberry Banke. The reason was that when the settlers arrived in 1630, there were masses of wild strawberries all over.  Then they decided that a shipping and business hub needed to have a more ‘professional’ name and so changed it to Portsmouth. I actually like the name Strawberry Banke better. 

Anyhoo, back in the 1950s when urban renewal was  in, all of the old buildings in the Puddle Dock area were going to be torn down for new construction. This was the oldest neighborhood in Portsmouth. A group of people bought the 10 acres of the property and have been working on restoring all of the old buildings and created the outdoor museum complex of Strawberry Banke.

 

There are 36 buildings and they left all the buildings were they stood except for several homes that were moved from another site to be saved from demolition, like the Governor Goodwin mansion.

 

Can you believe a developer was going to tear this down?   😯  Unbelievable. It was saved and brought to Strawberry Banke.  They restored it to period pieces of the late 1700s, I believe.

 

Including an old kitchen.  Pretty spacious, too!

They also recreated his wife’s garden based upon her writing, including a greehouse with period plants.

 

Of course, I had to find the resident kitteh! His name was George? and he was very friendly.

Each of the houses was different in terms of what year it was brought back to look like.  Some buildings were left as is to show building construction. Some were done in older periods.

Some were relatively newer.

There was the general store, which was stocked as it would be in the 1940s.

Several of the places had period characters that would describe life in the time period they were in, including the grocer who told us about the rationing and how hard it was to get certain foods like butter and milk.  

The nice thing about Strawberry Banke is that your admission ticket is good for 2 days. So, we saw some on Saturday and then went back Sunday morning.  It was neat because we were there right when it opened on Sunday and got pretty much private talks, which was neat!

Demonstrations also were done like blacksmithing, gardening, weaving and cooking.

We went to a weaving cottage and saw all the old machinery.

We were the only ones there, so the guide let us take a chance on the small looms.

That was fun, but I don’t see me wanting to buy a loom. 😀

BTW, the flags were to designate which buildings were open for visitors that day.  Some buildings are still being restored. Definitely a very good place to visit. Admission was $17.50, although we saved $3 with a coupon.  It’s nice having the option of going both days.

Bye Portsmouth!  We enjoyed our weekend!

Okay, last tidbits of Vegas.  I can’t believe how much we did.  We got to Vegas early Friday afternoon and I left Monday morning, leaving John behind for another 5 days.

Sunday morning, we got up early and headed out for breakfast.  Finally found some good coffee.  Finally!

Our mission was to head over to Mandalay Bay and check out the shark reef.  I wanted to go right when it opened because a lot of reviews said it got really crowded with families.

Some of what we saw along the way:

Excalibur.  This could use some blinging up, I think. I told John it looked like White Castle on steroids.

Then there was Luxor.  This was very cool looking.

It’s huge inside, too. It’s the second biggest hotel/casino in Vegas.

The pyramid has a light at the top that you can apparently see from a plane on a clear night.

The shark reef at Mandalay Bay is a fun little attraction. Tickets were $18 and it was basically an aquarium.  Nicely done, too.

Lots of sharks, of course.  Plus a very active octopus!

There was a large room that looked like a sunken ship and had glass all around to see all the sharks. Then there were 2 tunnels going in and out, which were covered in glass and the sharks would swim all around. I could have sat in there for hours. Mute the sound so you don’t hear all the noise.

Here are just a few random shots from around the strip.  At the Jean Phillipe cafe.

 

With yummy looking pastries:

Inside the Wynn Hotel:

The casino in New York:

M&M World!

(Sorry random lady that is now part of the internets – that’s what you get for walking into my picture)

Sunday night John R treated us to dinner and we went to Lemongrass.

This was a Thai restaurant and probably the best food I had during the weekend.  I got the Panang curry with crispy duck.

This was really, really good. I had it spiced at a level of 5 out of 10, which was about perfect. Although, it was a touch salty. Interestingly enough, we found this to be the case with a lot of the food here.

The volcano at the Mirage is pretty neat to see as well.  I think it goes off every half hour or so?  It’s a 5 minute display set to music of an erupting volcano.  Here is about a minute and a half of it.

It gets hot near there, too.

I have a bajillion pictures more pictures, but I think that’s enough for you all.  Thanks for coming along with!  I am glad I got a chance to experience Vegas. It’s not necessarily my type of town, but there certainly is a lot to do without dropping a dime in the casinos.  I only scratched the surface.  Now that I am gone, the guys can down to heavy-duty poker 😀

Thank goodness for airport delays so I could get these posts done and scheduled to run, too. Guess there is an up side to the delay at any rate.

Big, big thank you to John R for the invite – so very generous and much appreciated!

More Vegas doings!  One nice thing about being East coast time is that no one is up in Vegas when you are, so the mornings were very quiet and we enjoyed walking around and doing things before it got crowed, because it got *really* crowded later.

We had a nice breakfast at a cafe.

Let me tell you, it is really hard to find a good cup of coffee in Vegas.  We found decent stuff, but only one place that had really good coffee.  It’s all too weak!  And I refuse to do Starbucks when exploring a new place.

We made a stop at the Flamingo, which still seems a bit old fashioned, even though it was just updated in the 1990s.

I wanted to see the flamingo habitat.  This was free to see.  What a little gem this is!  It a lush and green environment for several types of birds.  The flamingos, of course.

Some brown pelicans:

And lots of ducks.  These 2 cracked me up.

It’s a fairly large habitat to walk through and it was nice and quiet.

There was a little chapel and pagoda as well and some lucky couple was getting married that day 😀

John and I window shopped for a while.  We walked a ton of miles this weekend, probably close to 20, I would say.

We found a cute cuppicake shop, so you know I had to get one to try! This was from the Cupcakery.

We brought these back to the hotel, hence the napkin.

John then joined his friend at the poker tables and I went back outside exploring.  This was Crystals, a high-end shopping boutique.

I did find myself getting irritated a bit at the excess of stuff and exorbitant prices.  I mean, it is Vegas and all that, but like I said to John, if I am going to drop $1000 on something by Louis Vuitton, then he better at least have put some stitches in it himself and not some underpaid factory person overseas.

As I said, I loved looking around the casinos.

This is the Aria poker room:

I had to rest for a while because I was getting tired from all that walking and the heat.  I got the text to meet up for dinner and I got all dressed up.

My new dress, which I got on sale at Penney’s for $25.  LOL!  And my comfie new sandals.  I am no fashion plate, but I felt good in what I was wearing. I felt bad for a lot of women clomping around Vegas in high heels.  You can always tell the women that are used to walking in heels and those that bought heels for vacation nightlife. It’s not pretty.  There was also a lot of dress adjusting going on.  Another thing when trying on a tight short dress, walk around in it and see if it hikes up when you walk. There were a lot of ladies that obviously did not do that and were constantly pulling their skirts back down into place.

We ate at the buffet at the Aria.  We wanted to pay for dinner for John’s friend (John R – I know, 2 Johns!) and that was his favorite place to eat, so we did that.  It actually a really good buffet. I didn’t get any pictures, though.

After dinner we walked to the fountains at Bellagio to see the display.

Here is a blip of the 5 minute show.

Of course, the song this time was Celine Dion, which made me laugh because I have never liked this song.  I like the fountains, though. I loved watching them from our hotel window, even though you couldn’t hear the music.

I have a few more things that we crammed in there, so I guess one more post will have to be done!

*** Please note, normally we have an AIM post on Mondays, but since it is a holiday, all 5 of us will be back next Monday with a new post!**

This was a bit of an unplanned trip.  One of John’s friends invited us both out to Vegas and put us up in the Vdara hotel.  It’s not a trip I would have thought to do, but I wasn’t going to turn down that generous offer! Now, I am leaving Vegas on Monday as just a long weekend, but John will be in Vegas for a week.

The irony is that it was raining when we arrived in Vegas. Then it stopped and got really muggy.  Really, Vegas??  Somebody lied to me about the dry heat.

Anyway, This is the Vdara.  It’s pretty new, from 2009, and it is an eco friendly hotel, which you all know I love.  The rooms are all suites.  There is no casino and no smoking in this hotel, so it was a bit quieter for that.

 

King size bed.

 

Which has a view of the TV and the eating area:

It has a kitchenette:

And a fabulous bathroom!

 

I actually wasn’t super crazy about the shower.  I miss my rain showerhead 😀  The tub I loved, though.

I even bought some bubble bath to use for it 😀

View from our hotel room.  22nd floor.

 

That’s the Bellagio fountain in the background.

 

Here is the view at night.

 

John and I wandered around checking things out.

John has been here before several times (playing poker), but I have not.  I don’t gamble much.  I can play poker and blackjack, but I was more interested in what else there was to do in town.  I have to say I loved how many flowers I saw in the casino and hotels.  Like the mini botanical garden inside the Bellagio:

 

You guys know how much I loved this!

 

I loves my hubby 😀

 

Chiluly ceiling in the Bellagio.

It’s nice just to walk around the casinos and really pay attention to the details.  They certainly are beautiful.

I liked going to Paris!

The Eifel Tower is over the casino there. When you get inside, it is like downtown Paris streets.

Even the bathrooms were very French rococo style.  I always describe women’s bathrooms to John because he is amazed at how much nicer they are than the men’s ‘get in, get out’ places.  I even took a picture of the sink in the bathroom to show him LOL!

Lots of shopping the the Paris ‘underground’.  Check out these boots!

Oo-la-la!

 

I will do another post as this one will just be waayyyy too long.  I took hundreds of pictures!

 

Walking on the beach.  I actually had to duck back a bit taking this picture as the waves got a little close!

We spent 2 days in the Ogunquit/Kennebunk area.  There was a lot to explore.  We were hoping to find better bike trails, but it just wasn’t happening, so we did a ton of walking.  We did find a Franciscan Monastery and wandered around those trails.

 

This trail led to the water’s edge and we saw a common Eider!

 

It was peaceful and relaxing.

 

The next day, we stopped for a donut breakfast at Congdon’s.  Can I tell you that this was probably the best donut I have had in my life?  Puts fresh and hot Krispy Kremes to shame. Seriously.

 

This was the honey dipped cake style donut.  Damn this was good.  You know that saying “nothing tastes as good as thin feels“?  – well, they haven’t eaten one of these.

Then it was to Portland.  It was chilly and windy in the morning, but we biked anyway.  We found the East Cove trail, which ended up being about 8 miles or so of path?

 

 

It was mildly annoying because the paths just dumped you out to a busy intersection with no direction of where to go.  We put about 11 miles on the bikes and then were a bit frustrated so called it a day on the wheels.  Then we walked and shopped in Portland.  We saw Henry Wadsworth-Longfellow’s house.

 

It has a precious hidden garden behind it.

 

There was also a multitude of coffee shops and we had a difficult time choosing one for a latte.  We decided on Coffee By Design.

 

It was quite tasty!  We sought out little local roasters and coffee shops on our trip, which was fun.  I was wondering how many lattes I could drink in a day and still function – but I never found out (the most I had was 2).

We decided at this point to start heading back to NY.  We were mostly avoiding the interstate, so driving was pretty lazy and slower.  We did stop at Cape Elizabeth to see the other uber famous lighthouse in Maine.  The Port Head Light!  I loved, loved, loved this lighthouse!  My favorite.  We were there near sunset and it afforded me great lighting.  If only I had a really good camera.

 

It almost doesn’t look real!  This lighthouse you can go right up to and touch if you want, which I did.

 

I have a bajillion pictures of this one 

 

Breathtaking views:

 

Plus some interesting writing on the rocks.

A very nice person took our picture.

 

This is really just 5 hours from our home.  I never really realized how close the Maine coast was to us. Seems like a world away, but we will definitely be back!

I think Portsmouth, NH was our favorite city.  It was just big enough to have lots of stuff to do, but small enough to not be overwhelming (plus really good coffee).

 

The last part of our vacation was in Maine.  We had no itinerary and just stopped wherever seemed interesting, so we ended up in Ogunquit as our home base and stayed for 2 days.  I had heard of Ogunquit before from Stephen King’s The Stand.  Fran and Harold were from there. Ogunquit means “Beautiful Place by the Sea” – and it was!

Our first stop was the Rachel Carson Wildlife Refuge for a hike.  This is a wonderful little place with a salt marsh, which is actually pretty rare.

 

There we stops along the way that explained about the salt marsh and its delicate habitat.

 

This little guy popped out of his hole in the ground to say hi:

Actually, it was probably more like “Get off of my lawn!”

I was scanning for wildflowers in the hopes of seeing a lady slipper, but no luck there.  John actually found this one (so proud of him!):

 

Trillium.  I have never seen one in the wild in bloom before.  Yay me!

Ogunquit is really touristy, but has the most beautiful coast line.  The nice thing about traveling out of season is that there are hardly any people around.  Yes, some things aren’t open and no swimming, but I am not much of a swimmer – I just like to look.  There is about a mile of path called Marginal Way, which follows the coast and has spectacular views.

 

It was a beautiful day, too.

 

Can you imagine living here and looking over this view?

We weren’t sure if this was a luxury home or a hotel (under construction).

 

You reach the end of Marginal Way at Perkins Cove and some shops.  Right at the end is Breaking New Grounds cafe.  There is a cafe in Portsmouth that is run by the son of the owner of the Ogunquit cafe (which we also stopped at).  The view was phenomenal!

 

These were the chairs outside the cafe.  I was so happy sitting here and relaxing.

We also were able to get to the most photographed lighthouse, which is the Nubble.

 

This teetery little cable basket is how the lighthouse keepers get back and forth from the island.

 

No thank you!

It’s a very pretty scene, but not my favorite lighthouse – you will see that one tomorrow.

 

We feasted on more lobster at the Maine Diner, which was featured on Diners, Drive Ins and Dives.  I had the lobster mac and cheese:

 

That was a claw I pulled out from the bottom.  There was a *ton* of lobster in this and so delicious!

Our home base was the Ogunquit  Inn.

This was sort of a hybrid of a BB and a hotel.  It was in a house, but the owner was not one of those that interacts much with the people staying there.  He provided a nice continental breakfast for everyone.

The first night  – we were the only ones in the inn.  The price was really reasonable as well (off season).

Our room opened to a balcony:

 

and overlooked the garden:

 

I loved this place.  We had only booked for one night, but then asked if the room was available to stay another and lucky for us – it was.    We were able to walk to the Marginal Way and downtown from here, which was really convenient.

I’ll tie it all up tomorrow!

 

New Hampshire! We spent a night in Concord, but then headed out towards Manchester and  Portsmouth for some riding!

First was Manchester.  Ready for riding!

There was a short bike trail that we found.

It was only a few miles long, but very pretty.  Crossing the Merrimack:

This was a nice bridge to cross over.  No cars!

Then we moved on to  Portsmouth to spend the night.  We biked to breakfast at Friendly Toast. This is a quirky little place with some good food!

Lots of memorabilia.

 

 

John and I split a fruit cup.

Yes, this was the cup!!! I can’t imagine what the bowl size is!

And we split an order of Hansel and Gretel  gingerbread waffles.

OMG – these were so good!  They had a pomegranate molasses drizzle on them.

Then it was time for some riding.  It was a bit  chilly this day.  Had to layer up.

I crush the tiny lighthouse with my bare hands:

This was a beautiful ride.  We followed along the water when we could.  Check out this cool sculpture.  When you stand just right:

 

I wonder if the people who live here take this for granted.  I suppose we all take where we live for granted after a while.

 

We had our first lobster roll in Portsmouth as well.

 

We hadn’t tried another one yet, so I would agree that this is the best so far!

 

We shared one because it was so big!  Lots of good lobster meat and very little mayo on a toasted bun.  Simple and perfect.

 

I don’t want to overload you with pictures, so I will stop there.

Okay, one more from Hampton Beach!

Here are some of our Vermont ramblings. Home of the covered bridge!

A lot of bridges were damaged during Hurricane Irene, but this was repaired.  This was in uber quaint Woodstock.

On Monday, We hiked down Quechee Gorge on the trail. It’s not very long, but somewhat steep on one side.

There is a dam on the high end:

This is the view from the route 4 bridge.

Now down at the bottom on the other side.

At the bottom was a small piece of slate that a breast cancer survivor left, which was touching.

We spent the night in West Lebanon at the Coolidge Hotel, which is on the historic register and pretty neat!  It’s old and has a lot of charm.  Some people probably wouldn’t like it, but I thought it was neat!

Of course, you know we sniffed out coffee shops.  This was Tucker Box next to the hotel.

 

We spent some time at the Vermont Institute of Natural Science, which is a NFP bird rescue and education center.

I had posted some pics on facebook of the birds, but here are a couple more.  All of the birds here were rehabbed from injury or from being imprinted on people (therefore cannot be wild).  Only the  barn owl was raised by a breeder.

Ruff legged hawk:

As we headed to New Hampshire, we had to stop at King Arthur Baking Company Headquarters.  They have a huge store there.

I didn’t buy anything, though, as we can get KA stuff in our grocery stores.  I did have something at the cafe, though. YUM!

Bread makers at work!

 

And the pastry workers as well.

 

That was fun to watch!

 

 

Getting in some good relaxing!

 

Happy Mother’s Day!

After we took mom and dad out to breakfast, it was off on our trip!  Pixie had to be left behind with a house sitter – and we will miss her, but I need a vacay!

We are driving blind so to speak.  Our destination is Maine and we have no hotels booked or any itinerary. We are just stopping where it looks like fun and enjoying what there is to do.

We sure found something fun on Sunday! We wanted to see the Quechee Gorge in Vermont, but there was also a glass blowing workshop there by  Irish glass maker Simon Pearce.  Now when hurricane Irene went through, this workshop was flooded as it was in an old mill and right on the river.  They had to rebuild the glass blowing area.  It is so cool!  Some of the tools:

 

The work area.  There are a couple ovens for shaping and a big oven that just holds molten glass.

 

These ovens are hot!!

 

The guys working were really nice. They said to ask any questions while they worked.

This is a fresh dollop of molten glass ready to be made into a glass.

 

They will roll the glass and shape it with the tools.

 

They can heat the glass up again at one of the ovens.

 

This guy is making a bowl:

 

That glass is glowing hot and they aren’t wearing gloves. Eeeek!

 

They trim the glass with scissors, which is crazy.

 

So cool!  Now I want to do glass.  I would love to do this.  One of the guys I talked to has been doing it for 3 years.  He used to be a teacher and kind of fell into doing the glass and realized that was what he wanted to do instead of teaching.  He said he went from teaching to learning.

The upstairs is all the fancy displays of the finished glass, which I can’t afford.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the gorge is pretty amazing as well:

 

Wildlife exploring tomorrow and hopefully a visit to King Arthur Flour store!