[Market Square, Portsmouth, NH; 11/26/11]
My mother and I used to go shopping in Portsmouth the day after Thanksgiving (aka Black Friday) when my parents lived at the beach, 20 minutes away. It was often ungodly cold, and one year we bought warm wool hats in the first shop we entered. The first couple of years, there were few other shoppers, everyone else having gone to the malls while we poked around the little shops filled with non-mass-produced things. It got more crowded over the years, but we still had a great time shopping and stopping for lunch or a coffee in the cozy cafes.
Yesterday, D and I took a drive up from Boston (about an hour) on an unseasonably warm, 60-degree day. I had a Small Business Saturday $25 credit to use and a few of the local shops were participating. I prefer the small shops anyway, and I did find a cute shirt on sale at one shop (alas, it wasn't participating) and used my credit on a scarf in another. It was just nice to be out wandering the familiar streets and enjoying the sunshine.
How lovely a scene and how warm! Here we've been having a Novemeber monsoon and about 50F, which means some of the lovely snow on the mountains is getting washed away.
Posted by: marja-leena | Sunday, November 27, 2011 at 11:35 AM
That looks a lovely human-scale place, and how good to have a beach nearby.
Posted by: Relatively Retiring. | Sunday, November 27, 2011 at 01:44 PM
Marja-Leena: Yes, weirdly warm for this time of year. But we are happy for the sunshine. Hope the rain lets up out there for you soon.
RR: It is a wonderful place. I always loved going to Portsmouth - and the beach!
Posted by: Leslee | Monday, November 28, 2011 at 08:05 PM