Newburyport, MA

New photos added to the urban_hikers photostream on flickr:

Click here to check out photos from Newburyport, the beach and Salisbury arcade zone.


Description:

It's close to Lowell, but still a bit of a jaunt to get there for us. Less than an hour, but lots of little Routes and towny roads when you're not on 495. Anyway, if you live in the area and haven't been there, or it's been awhile, I highly suggest you go. Make double sure to visit the used bookstore as well, as it's owned by a real "flower child" from the 60s! She is awesome to talk with if you need respite from the heat of the day.

There's also a great little kitchen shoppe where I got an unusual item which I had ironically been searching for for some time: a tiny, portable, one-handed pepper grinder to take with me whenever we go out. Strange, I know, but the fact that they had one for me to buy in Newburyport is even stranger.

After spending the day exploring the town, we headed for the beach - Salisbury Preserve, to be precise. It's a nice, wide beach with great views, plus it was low tide so it was even wider. After a couple hours, we wanted to head back but we had passed 2 MILES of trffic coming in - no doubt all the beachgoers heading back to town for the night. So we turned north instead of south and ended up in a town called Salisbury, which is kind of like a little boardwalk half-assed beach town with arcades, dive bars, calm huts and Elvis impersonators. NO public restrooms anywhere - what are they thinking?

We then headed back to town and went to an AWEsome pizza place I'd seen earlier called "Oregano", where we had fantastic service and delicious hand-tossed brick oven pizza. You can read my review here. On a funny note, I ended up selling the hat I was wearing to a 3-wheeled bike taxi guy. He was riding by, staring, and then he dismounted and ran inside the restaurant, offering cash for the very hat I was wearing! He loved it, we negotiated, and in the end we didn't have to pay for dinner thanks to the hat! Good stuff, fun place. Very walkable in a day.

Lowell Canal Walk :: Early Spring.

Yesterday (Saturday) we went on our first complete "canal walk" in Lowell. It was, in our opinion the first "real" spring day of the season, so it was a great time to explore the town on foot. I ended up with way too many pictures to put in a single blog entry, so I've created a flickr photostream that showcases all the pictures in the order they were taken. These few are just samples from the entire set, which is quite large. There's a link at the end of the post to take you to flickr for the rest...

...we started out from our apt. at the American Textile History Museum (re-opening in May 2009), crossed Dutton Street to where the trolley stop is, and started from there. You can park at the ATHM anytime thanks to the huge parking lot, and begin your tour from there as well.

I believe it's called Swamp Lock at this point of the canal system, and there are Canal Walk signs along the way with maps and arrows to guide you along. We had a downtown Lowell walking map as well, which you can obtain for free from several local businesses. It folds up to business card sized so you can always have it on you. Lush Beads, at Western Ave Studios, is where we got ours.

Anyway, the self-guided tour follows the canal system and there are a few informational signs along the way as well. With all the snowfall recently that has melted, the canals and waterfalls were raging! Would have been great for rafting ;)

The path also winds through downtown, so you can grab lunch or a coffee at almost any point of the tour close-by. We pit-stopped at Boott Mills Museum, where national park ranger Cherrie Swann was gracious enough to fill us in on all things Lowell, including some gruesome tales of early mill-girl injuries from working in the sweatshop-like textile factories in the 1840's. Eeek.

Boott Mills is $6 for adults to access the entire museum, and if by this point you are pooped out you can take the trolley back to the visitor center which is much closer to the ATHM where you parked your car. We opted to save the trolley for another day and kept walking. The canal walk from this point simply heads through the grounds of Lowell High School and takes you back to Merrimack Street, which is I guess the main street downtown. At this point, you can either follow the canal back to the museum or head through town.

We decided to check out the Revolving Museum since it was on our way back, and added a few pix to the end of the photostream from there. Our day actually didn't stop after that, either. We mustered up all the strength we had and walked to the Western Ave Studios, which is another old mill building converted to artist galleries and studios. They do open Saturdays monthly, and there are over 250 artists on display, so we spent the rest of the day there.

Finally, after nearly wearing out our shoes, we met up with some friends and journeyed (by car) to the newly reopened Cafe Aiello. I urge you, if you are a fan of real espresso, to support this cafe. They make a great cup and have wonderful ambience as well as helpful staff.

Whew! I'm exhausted just writng about all that! For those of you who are still with me, click here to head on over the the photostream at flickr:

welcome to the "real" urban hikers blog.

this is the first post for the urban hikers.

the reason we've called it "realurbanhikers" is because so many other urban hiking-related names were already taken by others, yet most of them hadn't been updated in over a year. others, more recently updated, talked about walking on man-made "nature trails" that are located in cities. while this is all well and good on it's own, we aren't sure that it meets our description of "real" urban hiking, thus the name.

when we're urban hiking, we're treating the city just like we treat the woods or the mountains when we're on a "regular" nature hike. that is, we're taken in by the beauty of the landscape, we walk every step with awareness, and we usually don't have any specific agenda in mind.

it's not always an option to just go up into the mountains when you live in the city, so this evolved as a way to get our hiking fix without having to drive 2 hours to a specific hiking location. as the phrase has picked up steam over the past few years, we've noticed others are starting to feel the same way too. we traded mountains for skyscrapers, streams for gutters, caves for retail shops, and grassy meadows for city squares. while we still love to get out into nature once inawhile, the city is where we live and we want to get the most out of it that we can.

so many people live in a city, town or village without ever going past their own neighborhood. urban hikers get out and visit every nook and cranny of a locale at least once, if only just to say that "they've been there". we encourage comments and feedback, and will welcome your stories and posts. just email them to us, we'll edit spelling and the like, then they'll be posted within a day or so.

we've also established a photostream on flickr, which you can join at flickr.com/groups/urbanhikers , and we have a Twitter feed called @urban_hikers , where we post links to the best gear, routes and tips to enhance your urban_hiking experience.

let's share the experience of the city with everyone!