I’ve flown to or via Europe many times over the past 55 years, but until last month, never to or through Frankfurt. I’ll never again schedule travel using that airport.
For this year’s holiday gathering with our son and his family, who live in Zanzibar, we aimed for something roughly half-way between; someplace that was not overly cold; but also someplace where our grandchildren could experience snow, which none of them had done since the oldest started walking. One of guys with whom I play pickup soccer mentioned the Sierra Nevada de Espana, outside Granada, and we settled on three weeks in Andalucia, starting out in Seville; then to Granada, culminating in four days of skiing and other winter sports in the Sierra Nevada. It sounded like a great compromise.
But Seville proved to be a hard destination to reach from DC. So in checking around, we ended up with a three-leg flight which took us through Charlotte and Frankfurt, making the reservation through Travelocity and American Airlines. What a nightmare!
Monday, January 9, 2023
Our vacation in Andalucia begins – a clusterfuck at Frankfurt Airport
Tuesday, December 13, 2022
Sunday, July 3, 2022
A Day in Portsmouth New Hampshire
We have been coming to New Hampshire for 39 years, but we have never been east of Manchester (and even in Manchester, only in the airport back when we used to fly up to visit my father at his Stone Pond summer house, which we now own). So we decided to spend what seemed likely to be a rainy Saturday visiting Portsmouth, the main town in New Hampshire’s very short stretch of Atlantic coastline. One of my goals was to get to the Smuttynose Brewery – we have been enjoying their ales since the mid-1980's when they had next to no distribution beyond New Hampshire. Then they were available only in the Richmond area, so I had to drive south to Ashland Virginia to find a beer store carrying their ales. These days you can sometimes find it in the better liquor stores in DC, but mostly we stock up at Hannafords whenever we come to New Hampshire. Ideally, I would have gone for a tour of the brewery, but they stopped offering tours a few years ago. At the very least, I figured to eat lunch and dinner at one of their outlets in the Portsmouth area.
We got started in the midmorning so it was approaching noon when we reached Hampton, at th southern end of the Portsmouth area. Nancy was getting hungry, so we stopped for lunch at the Smuttynose Brewery
And....there it was, the brewery where the magic happens!
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| Smuttynose Brewery, Hampton, NH |
The rain had ended by then; in fact, it was getting sunny, so we sat down in the outdoor seating area of the restaurant
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| Smuttynose Restaurant in Hampton, NH |
and ordered appetizers (brussels sprouts tossed with garlic parm dressing and pretzel bites with a beer-based cheese sauce) and fish and chips. The brussels sprouts were pretty good; the others were acceptable. Ah, but the beer! Nancy got a glass of Common Man ale, while I got a tasting flight: Robust Porter, an old favorite; Cherry Sour; Raspberry Lime Rickey Sour; and Snaccident, a chocolate peanut butter stout. In the latter, I finally found a stout that was too thick for my taste, but the others were all good choices. A singer named Ryan Williamson started playing at 1, just as we were ready to leave. We couldn’t bear to listen. They apparently have music daily at 6:30 and at 1 PM on weekends
As we were getting ready to leave, the tasting bar was open so I wanted to go take a look. Our waiter had mentioned that I could get a good look inside the brewery from a window on the side, and indeed I could
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| View of Smuttynose Brewery from its window |
But even better – inside the retail store there was a sign for the rest rooms which, as it turned out, were at the edge of the brewery – so I was able to get into the brewery and walk around looking at the fermentation vats
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| Inside Smuttynose Brewerry |
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| Smuttynose brewing vats |
Not the same as a tour, to be sure, but it will have to do!
Then we drove up to Portsmouth and parked near the Portsmouth Historical Society where we picked up free maps for two self-guided walking tours. We proceeded to walk in the hot sun for the next two hours, looking at buildings from the later years of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th
Many of the houses had labels giving their historical names and dates, such as the Dreadwell Jenness house from 1818
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| Dreadwell Jenness House |
There were plenty of historical plaques shedding light on the buildings; uses and the personages who had lived there.
The Rockingham Hotel, with medallions including terra cotta busts of the founders
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| Bust of Frank Jones on the Rockingham Hotel |
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| Rockingham Hotel, Portsmouth |
Near the Rockingham was a memorial to enslaved residents of Portsmouth (seen in the foreground below)
The 1784 Governor John Langdon House
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| Governor John Langdon House |
and this plaque remembering one of Langdon's servants
We declined to take the tour of the Langdon House. When we asked how much the tour cost, the person at the gate hesitated an had to look it up, so we got the impression she had not had any paying customers recently. At $13 for seniors, I was not surprised
But we had a nice walk in the adjoining garden
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| Garden of John Langdon House |
This was the childhood home of James Fields, who was a major publisher of American fiction in he middle of the 19th Century. The plaque credits him with turning the Atlantic monthly into a literary force, although it is not cleat to me how accurate that is
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| James Fields home |
The South Meeting House (and its adjoining horse barn)
Finally we reached the harbor
And walked along the waterfront until we reached a park and the Point Of Graves Burying Ground, which contained tombstones from as far back at the late 17th century and many from the early to middle 18th. The tombstones were well preserved and featured the work of outstanding carvers from that period
As we started back to our car, we stopped to look at Memorial Bridge, which is dedicated to World War I soldiers and spans the Piscatauqua River, connecting Portsmouth with Kittery, Maine. Its center section was raised to allow a freighter to pass beneath
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| Dedication of Memorial Bridge, Portsmouth |
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| Memorial Bridge Vertical Lift in action |
Walking toward our car, we passed North Church on Market Square
I had hoped to have dinner at the Smuttlab restaurant in Dover NH, for another shot at a variety of Smuttynose ales (I had brought along an empty growler!), but Nancy was not hungry yet, so we headed for home
On our way back to Marlborough, we drove along the coastline, pausing at a rocky beach along the Atlantic
and then driving past beach side communities with houses ranging from simple bungalows to the most grandiose structures.
Driving home led us to a new dining discovery – Pearl, an unassuming-looking Asian Fusion place at the end of a strip mall just south of 101 in Peterborough. It may well be the best restaurant meal we have had in the area recently, at least a rival for Luca’s on the Keene Town Square.
We sat in their small outside dining area-- we would have been uncomfortable indoors which was packed and noisy. The restaurant has a nice beer and wine list, reasonably priced. We began with the arugula and blueberry salad, which came with a light blueberry dressing and plenty of small toasted cashews. For main dishes, I had the cashew-chili crusted salmon salad -- the salmon was perfectly cooked, and the salad with crispy veggies (including more arugula), I liked the small sugar snap peas. Nancy had the special, six sesame-crusted scallops with a tasty dressing sharp with wasabi, string potatoes and a delicious red-cabbage slaw.
It was a nice end to a good touring day