Oct 20, 2025

Mini Travel Blog

Booking the trip

This weekend, I went on a very short trip to southern New Hampshire for a friend's wedding. I kinda waited till the last minute to book flights/lodgings, so it was a little pricier than I would have liked, but not unbearably so. I ended up flying in the day of the wedding, and flying back the next day to save on lodgings, but it did mean I had a bit of a layover on the way home. So, lots of travel for a very short visit, but I think it meant a lot to my friend that I was able to make it out there.

Day 1

Southern NH is really pretty in the fall. The usually very green mountains are considerably less green this time of year. Lots of pockets of orange, yellow, and red with all the leaves changing over for the fall. It feels to me like the archetypal fall aesthetic is based on this part of the world.

I kinda press-ganged another one of my friends who lives nearby into hooking me up with a lift to the wedding, but luckily there was still a room at the place he was lodging at overnight, so it wasn't too out of the way for him. Play loose, get rewarded I guess. The place was a really cute little bed and breakfast about 20 minutes from the venue. It was a pretty old house, according to the placards on the room doors inside, dating back to the early 1800s.

Since I booked so last minute, I ended up with a probably too big room on the top floor of the building, atop a very cute spiral staircase. The room was nice and quaint, and also somehow filled with ladybugs all over the walls. This didn't really bug me (hah), since they're pretty harmless and kinda cute, but I probably wouldn't stay there longer than a night. The mattresses were both pretty firm, which I don't mind, but I definitely prefer a bit of a softer mattress, given the choice.

The wedding was actually just a reception, since my friend and his wife eloped earlier this year, but wanted to have the official party last weekend. It was at an old Moose's lodge, so it was pretty cute/quaint. The usual dancing, food, and speeches. At one point, the DJ transitioned Baby Shark into Sandstorm by Darude, and I just about lost my mind at the transition. Dude was cookin'. It was great seeing my high-school friends again! One of them has a kid now (on purpose), and that'll take some getting used to, mentally. I'm seeing them again real soon though, since another one of them is having a big wedding next weekend. Lots of travel for me!

After the reception, we headed back to the inn. It had a speakeasy on the main floor, but it was filled to the brim with locals, so I decided I'd wait till it died down a bit to give it a look. Unfortunately, it closed earlier than I expected, so by the time I went down to check it out, it was already deadzo. Oh well! Off to bed.

Day 2

The next morning, I had a nice breakfast parfait in their dining room, next to a big window with a view of the countryside. Lots of nice wildlife to watch with my coffee. I saw a bunch of pretty common birds (crows, robins, etc.), squirrels, a pack of turkeys (gobble gobble!), and even a white-tailed deer that was grazing nearby. It was real pretty!

We headed out to drive me back to the airport for the return flight, but took a short tourism sidequest in Portsmouth NH for lunch. We checked out a few local gift shops, and it turned out they were doing a stamp rally with a prize for buying something at each shop (including a restaurant). The shops were really cute, but they didn't allow photography inside for some reason, so I didn't get any good pictures really. That felt pretty weird to me. For lunch I had a massive club sandwich and coffee, since I was still a bit sleepy from the hard mattress. My friend covered my meal in exchange for importing a bottle of local gin to the next wedding. Hopefully there's a bottle at the duty-free, haha.

We checked out the waterfront a bit, which was nice, but smelled pretty strongly of the ocean. Not bad, just very ocean-y. We also finished up the stamp rally because we really wanted whatever the prize was, after getting 2/3 already. I ended up getting some nice tea spoons, and a little chunk of lapis lazuli as souvenirs. Nothing too prict, more just to say I did the stamp rally. Turns out that the prize was a wooden token worth 10% off my next purchase from one of the affiliated stores. The odds of me redeeming that are probably slim to none, but hey, free wooden token. Might use it as a token in a game maybe?

Time was a bit short, so we headed back to the airport, and I flew back home. While booking the flights, I was a bit annoyed that the layover was 3 hours long, but this turned out to be just fine, since my first flight was 2 hours delayed. I'm sure if I was actually trying to get there fast I'd be a bit salty, but I just had more time to play Balatro at the gate. Had some fairly disappointing poutine during the hour remaining of my layover, and made it back home. Nice little trip, even if I spent about 80% of it in some form of vehicle travel.