A walk downtown in Portsmouth, New hampshire

I took a walk around downtown today. Portsmouth is a dainty township of hardly thirty thousand people. A historic place that traces its history way back to the sixteenth century. Its inhabitants even today proudly call it the " jewel of New England". Within a couple of square miles, there were about hundred odd eating establishments (not the Franchisee's that we see all around the United states), but original family owned restaurants and pubs that have been around for a long time. It has an astonishingly high density of pubs and a large number of microbreweries for a small city. The people of Portsmouth obviously love their alcohol. As i walked along the frosted pavements of Downtown, literally every pub was brimming with activity and sounds of garrulous merry making echoed and ricocheted off the ancient brick walls : a lasting testament to the antiquity of the place . I believe, there is an University close by, and one could see young ,confident boys and girls, walking with trepidation into pubs (probably for the first time) to get used to the taste of finely brewed beer.

The "River Run" Bookstore in downtown is a wonderful place for book lovers. I walked into it at seven in the evening to find that there was a book reading session gong on inside. J.A Hitchcock , a renowned educator was speaking on the ill effects of unrestricted social media, and was reading and answering questions about her new book on Cyber crime. I listened to her some time and quietly slipped in between the racks to bury myself in the tome of books. The store did have a wonderful collection of rare books. In fact, I found a hard bound edition of "The satanic verses" by Salman Rushdie and a collection of critical essays by John Updike for a good price. I could not resist the temptation.

I landed up in an old restaurant called the "Press room", suggested by a co worker to grab to a Garden burger. The place had a live band playing country music on the saxophone. It seemed as though that most of folks who came there are regulars. There was good camaraderie all around. The burger was also surprisingly good. Probably, I was famished after all the walking that I had done.

Need to catch up on some study now....... the night is still young...............

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