Tag: newhampshirehistory

Spring Weekend at the Mount Washington Hotel & An Announcement!!

On By careofmonIn TripsLeave a comment

Well hello there!! I apologize for my absence the past couple weeks. Things have been busy here as spring is gearing up and now that the sprint to April vacation has ended, I can relax a little and catch up! If you follow me on instagram, you might have seen my post  announcing that I am pregnant!! My husband and I are expecting a baby boy October 1, which puts me right around 17 weeks right now. I have been feeling great, still able to exercise, so far so good! I did stop riding around 10 weeks, so I have definitely been missing the barn and Chandraki, and we decided this month to take a break from my beloved 4000 footers in NH. The actual act of hiking is fine, its more the length of time and the multiple bathroom breaks that are rough! We are so excited for this addition to our family, I can’t believe how fast the first four months have gone by.

My husband and I celebrated our first year of marriage a little while back with a much needed weekend up at the Mt. Washington Hotel! This history and location of this hotel make it so special to me, and its just beautiful. We stayed at the hotel for a weekend back in early July when it was warm and green, but this time around, the landscape was very different. There was still quite a bit of snow up there, it even snowed while we were driving up! This time around we did dinner in the main dining room, and the food was just amazing. My husband got a duck special, and I got the chicken pot pie arancini. Their dessert menu looked great but I was craving just simple chocolate, so we went to Morsels downstairs for some candy and a chocolate chip brownie! I wholeheartedly recommend the breakfast buffet in the morning. It was delicious and there were so many choices, there was no way not to leave satisfied. Here are some pictures of the beautiful Mt. Washington Hotel 🙂

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Great Hall/Lobby of the hotel. The pillars, and the chandeliers, and the carpets, oh man, its so beautiful and just transports you to a different, more elegant time.
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Fireplace in the conservatory, arguably my favorite room
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Beautiful details of the ceiling in the conservatory
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Entrance into the main dining room.
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Looking out at Mt. Jefferson and Mt. Washington from the veranda
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Panorama of the beautiful Presidential Range
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Red, white, and blue 🙂
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There is an indoor pool and hot tub and as well as the outdoor pool, heated for these colder months.

When we are at the Mount Washington, we tend to just walk around the hotel a lot, exploring and enjoying the hotel and the property. Its so beautiful and there’s so much to do in the area as far as outdoor activities. Quite a few families were up there for spring skiing at Bretton Woods.

Here is my last post from this past summer at the Mount Washington, has more of the awesome history in it!

The Grand Mt. Washington Hotel

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Stroll around Phillips Exeter Academy

On By careofmonIn Lifestyle2 Comments

So the April Fool’s Day snowstorm was crazy….we had about 10″ of snow from Friday afternoon to Saturday evening. It was heavy, wet snow, the kind that makes all the branches droop. Sunday was a really nice day though and the snow is already on its way out! I wanted to get out of the house and go to Laney & Lu’s for a treat, so I took Mizpah along for a walk around Exeter NH’s historic district after.

There were so many others out and about walking so it was the perfect walk for Mizpah to do some socializing. Mizpah is a dalmatian and they have a reputation for not always being the most social breed. She’s a dog who needs exercise daily, but more than that, she needs mental stimulation too daily. Having to walk on a sidewalk to my left and manage all the new smells and say hello (or not say hello) to other dogs on leashes, children, and adults is a lot of stimulation.

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The Squamscott River looking good with all the snowmelt! This river eventually empties into the Atlantic by Portsmouth NH
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The Jeremiah Smith House, built in 1730. There are quite a few historic homes in Exeter but I sorta fell for this one because its green! You don’t see a lot of historic homes in green! Jeremiah Smith was a governor of NH BUT I didn’t think he was born until the 1750s, so not sure how this house is connected.
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Here is the Jeremiah Smith Hall, the main administration building at Phillips Exeter Academy
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The Academy Building at Phillips, home of the assembly hall….totally in love with the tall ship weathervane
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Phillips Church, built in 1895 as a congregational church in Exeter and later sold to Phillips to be their school chapel
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Here is the tower of the chapel, the stonework is beautiful and reminds me of a similar chapel at Groton School in Groton MA.

So these images are of the Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, NH, not to be confused with Phillips Academy in Andover, MA. Phillips Academy in Andover was founded by Samuel Phillips, Jr in 1778 and Phillips Exeter Academy was founded by his uncle, John Phillips, three years later. As you can imagine, there is quite a rivalry between the two schools. Phillips Academy is the one that the Bush’s went to as well as JFK Jr. Phillips Exeter is where Franklin Pierce, Ulysses S. Grant, and Abraham Lincoln’s son Robert went. Also if you ever read A Separate Peace by John Knowles, he is a Phillips Exeter alum soooo Devon School is really based on his alma mater.

The classic New England boarding schools with the brick buildings, crisp white accents, stone chapels, and grassy courtyards are beautiful. I wonder sometimes if I could live the teacher life at a boarding school. Maybe when I have retired from public school teaching and have gotten my PhD in biology (which I totally want to do, I will be the old lady shuffling around the lab with the 25 year old post docs saying things like “Back in my day..”), I will teach at a private school to supplement my summer travel account!!

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