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.