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I was up in Portsmouth for the first time this past Saturday and while my travel companion ducked into and out of all the trendy shops, I had time to steal a photo here and there
. It only annoyed her a little 
.Anyway, here are my capsule impressions of Portsmouth (coming from a Providence, RI resident who has lived in New Haven, NYC, NY State, and Minnesota):
- First of all, I loved it. Tremendously preserved architecture and many of the newer buildings fit in beautifully. A wonderful mix of old and contextual new... Why don't more New England cities look like this?
- Portsmouth was smaller than I thought it would be... It reminded me of Burlington, but smaller and with more "historic" architecture. It feels far more like a big small town than a small city. Burlington feels orders of magnitude more "urban," for example, despite what I'm guessing is a similar sized population (am I right about that?)...
- Portsmouth seemed to have a nice mix of focus on its residents and the tourist... It seems like both a nice place to potentially live and to visit. Well done...
- Its centrally placed municpal parking garage was wonderful, convenient, and unobtrusive. Smack dab in the middle of everything, but nearly invisible. This reminded a lot of 50 France in Edina, Minnesota. Every leader from Providence, RI should have a mandatory field trip to see this parking structure (and representatives from Federal Hill, Downcity, and Thayer Street in Providence shouldn't be allowed to leave until they agree to do something similar)...
- Easily the best preserved original architecture in a downtown of any New England city I've seen save, perhaps, Providence. Have there been a lot of conservation battles here?
- Tremendously easy access from I-95...
- Fairly sophisticated dining options for such a small town. Shockingly, most major genres are covered in about 4 or 5 square blocks. The quality of the places we went were average, though, independent of price range...
- The Music Hall was cute, and the day we were there, they had the James Sewell Ballet (I wish they'd visit Providence!!)
- The town seems to roll up the sidewalks pretty early for a Saturday...
- Like many a New England town up and down the shore (including Providence, Boston, and New Haven), the waterfront is dramatically underutilized resource. They seem to be trying to do more with it now, but it's a distant second fiddle to the town's other offerings...
That's my impression after a day there!
I'll post photos intermittently throughout the week as I get around to processing them. These are going to be a bit of an experiment, as I've found that my Fujitsu laptop's monitor is soooo good, and sooo bright, that I've been process light, contrast, etc to fit my machine, and my photos are resultingly looking dark for the rest of the world, so I'm actually turning down my monitor for processing these photos. Hope it works...
Here are first three!
Market Square...
Market Street Streetscape during the day...
Route 1 Bridge (I think?)... This is a very small scaled version of a high res panorama, so I can post a much wider version of this if desired without a drop in visual quality...
More to come during the week!
- Garris
Providence, RI
