PORTSMOUTH, N.H. _ It was love at first sight. As one all too accustomed to America's obsession with a standardized urban design _ every other block decorated with a Rite Aid, Panera, Starbucks and McDonald's _ Portsmouth came as a breath ... no, make that a gust of fresh air.
This port city on the Piscataqua River and just a few miles from New Hampshire's only stretch of coastline, seems tailor-made for a dripping-with-New England-atmosphere TV series: "Murder, She Wrote's" Cabot Cove without the murders, "Gilmore Girls' " Stars Hollow without the melodrama, or "Dawson's Creek's" Capeside without the teen angst.
I arrived in Portsmouth just in time to catch the compact, eminently walkable downtown decked out in Spooktacular Halloween fashion. Black-clad sprites with pumpkin heads hung from lampposts in Market Square; 18th century Federal-style houses boasted evilly leering Jack 'O Lanterns, and costumed shopkeepers dispensed everything from spiced lattes to fresh-from-the-oven cookies.
I wouldn't have been at all surprised to see Ichabod Crane hotfooting it down the cobbled streets _ the headless horseman in pursuit.
On my first morning, I stopped in at the Goods Market and Cafe for a jolt of java to get the day started. It would be tempting to dismiss this place as a typical hipster hangout with lots of fair-trade goods and food products from local farmers. It does have that, but it also has a wonderful vibe that is more homey than hipster, thanks to the welcoming personality of Jackie, the owner, who likes to describe herself as a "New England cowgirl."
It soon became obvious that Goods Market and Cafe is a daily gathering spot for much of the town, due in large part to Jackie's winsome ways and her oh-so-buttery croissants.
Freshly fueled, I was off for my tour of Strawbery Banke Museum. Portsmouth's most popular attraction, it is a 10-acre outdoor history museum showcasing 400 years of Americana. Most of the 37 buildings are on their original sites alongside the riverbank, and are interspersed with 10 historical gardens from a Colonial kitchen garden to a World War II Victory Garden.
According to Stephanie Seacord, director of marketing communications, the gardens are just one of four sites in the world teaching about change in the landscape over multiple centuries.
To do justice to the museum would take most of the day, but visitors can get a sense of Strawbery Banke's historical value by taking in buildings from different eras.
Costumed role players welcomed me to such diverse dwellings as the 18th century Wheelwright House offering an authentic open-hearth cooking demonstration; the Pitt Tavern, a Revolutionary War-era tavern frequented by George Washington, John Hancock and the Marquis de Lafayette, and Goodwin Mansion, home to Civil War Gov. Ichabod Goodwin.
Even if you think you've seen enough living history museums, this one you won't want to miss, because as Seacord reminds, "Strawbery Banke is where the stories of America unfold."
I continued my history lesson with a Discover Portsmouth Walking Tour, a jaunt through several hundred years of Colonial America. My favorite site was the lemon-yellow three-story dwelling that was once home to John Paul Jones, speaker of that early American sound bite, "I have not yet begun to fight."
Often referred to as "the Father of the American Navy," Jones lived here briefly following the Revolutionary War while he supervised the building of the ship America on the city's docks.
