Dec 17

On man, this is the start of my final week here and there's a few hundred more things I meant to do, like actually leave this area and check out Portland, Maine (about an hour north) or Boston (about an hour south.) Jeez! I should kick this vacation up a notch! But, honestly, I'm not about to blow my laidback-ness over it soooo, never mind about the whole running around thing. I haven't so much as made a list in three weeks. Can you believe that? Not one list!

At least today I finally got around to trying some seafood chowdah for lunch, I mean, it is New England, right? Well,  (plug your ears, vegan friends), chowder for lunch was delicious! And the view from my table (at The River House) was very Portsmouth-y.

I was sorry that none of the three tugboats were making any little tugboat whistles or tuba sounds. I kept imagining that they were anyway. I took this photo through a thick plastic window on the heated deck. You might want to check out the harbor or tugs here at the  Portmouth Harbour and Tugboat cam
(And here's a shout out to my kids who had a tugboat VHS that got as overplayed as any childrens' tape.  It might have been called Theodore the Tugboat or Tommy the Tugboat. The do do doot doot doot!! greeting is forever lodged in my brain. Does anyone know what I'm talking about??)

Aaaanway, I haven't gone overboard (haha) to tell you much about the food I've been having. I should tell you that one day I had a pork tenderloin, which is like the state treat of Indiana, like what wings are to Buffalo (notice a native never calls them 'chicken wings' or 'Buffalo wings', it's just not needed)  or lobster rolls are to Maine. This tenderloin sandwich was nothing like the pressed, breaded, fried tenderloin of Indiana. No offense, Hoosiers, this was actually tasty and not so bad for you. It had arugula, caramelized onions, a thin slice of roasted butternut squash, pork, some type of cheese, um, some other stuff,...this was not your Whose your Daddy's tenderloin. yummy.

I won't go into too much detail about food or restaurants except this one True Fact: Most of the year, Porstmouth has more restaurant seats than it has population (about 21,000.) Some of the restaurants close during off season but there is a lot of dining out going on around here! To name just a couple: I loved the food at the Book and Bar (a used book store with a bar and tapas menu) and Beach Pea Bakery Cafe (almost a zero landfill cafe, all organic, etc.) Should I include The Pressroom? Well,  some good dishes, some just meh. Too bad, but you know I'm not there for the food.

But I've also done a little bit of grocery shopping, and here's where I should tell you that there's one thing that people in West Lafayette want almost as much as world peace and that is this:

And it takes me about 8 minutes to get there. So now do you believe me this little city has it all?

By the way, you might have noticed we got a little bit of snow. No problem, I'm prepared.
It looks like at least one shop owner is too:

So bring it on! I'm not going anywhere.