Visit Portsmouth

YOUR SCHOOL
SEVENTH OR EIGHTH GRADE TRIP TO HISTORIC PORTSMOUTH
SAMPLE ITINERARY

DAY ONE: ORIENTATION, STRAWBERY BANKE, BLACK LIGHT DANCE PARTY

Welcome to historic Portsmouth.

Meet your guide at Market Square and begin your Portsmouth visit with a brief orientation tour that will introduce you to the North Church, the 250-year-old Old State House (the seat of the Colonial Government from 1758 to 1776) and John Paul Jones' house; the tour will end with an inexpensive lunch on your own in the food court at Fox Run.

After lunch, transfer back to oldest neighborhood on the Seacoast, named Strawbery Banke Museum by the first settlers there in 1630. New Hampshire's rich history will come alive while you travel through three centuries while exploring historic houses, period gardens and craft shops.

You'll be well-prepared for this visit, because a team of the museum's role-players will visit your school and tell you about these periods at an eighth grade assembly in early May.

After your history lesson, meet the bus and transfer to your hotel where you will check in and freshen up.

Reassemble in the lobby then meet the bus and transfer across the Piscataqua River to the Kittery, Maine waterfront, where you'll have dinner at the water's edge at Warren's Lobster House.

After dinner, you will return to the hotel, then return to your rooms to dress in all white.

Reassemble in the ballroom where your evening will end with a 90-minute glow- in-the-dark-dance-party during which you'll dance your sox off to heart-pounding, bass-thumping music.

The event will include line dancing to the "Coco-Jumbo" (using Glow Ropes, gloves, non-toxic luminescent face paint and hair gel), there will be contests and prizes for the winners, then you'll return to your rooms at 10:00pm, when overnight security begins.

DAY TWO: ISLES OF SHOALS CRUISE, SEACOAST SCIENCE CENTER, DINNER AND A CUSTOMIZED TV GAME SHOW

After breakfast in the hotel, check out and place your bags on the bus, then depart for downtown Portsmouth where you will board the M/V Thomas Laighton (pictured at left) for a cruise to the Isles of Shoals, New Hampshire's most unique community, nestled five miles off the New Hampshire seacoast in the Atlantic Ocean.

You will scarcely believe you're still in the Granite State.

You'll have box lunch on board The Thomas Laighton en route back to the mainland.

Arrive at the downtown Portsmouth dock, meet your waiting bus, and depart for Odiorne Point State Park in nearby Rye, New Hampshire for a 'Rocky Shore Exploration' at the Seacoast Science Center, pictured below right.

Your morning or afternoon visit (depending on the time of the low tide) will begin with an indoor orientation, then a skilled naturalist will take you outdoors at low tide to teach you about the plants and animals that live in the intertidal zones.

This evening you will participate in a customized game show in which you and/or your classmates will be brought to an electronic game show set, in groups of four, to answer questions about TV themes, songs, trivia and your own school.

After the quiz show and dinner you'll stay for an hour of dancing before returning to your rooms at about 10 pm. Overnight security begins at 10:15pm.

DAY THREE: CITY TOUR; HARBOR TRAIL, FORT WILLIAM & MARY, USS ALBACORE, THE FASTEST SUBMARINE IN THE WORLD.

After breakfast, meet bring your bags to the lobby and place them on the bus.

Meet your guide and depart on a city sightseeing tour that will include the Harbor Trail, the Black Heritage Trail, New Castle's Fort Constitution (where the first hostilities of the American Revolution actually began), and Fort Point, where you'll also learn about Portsmouth's World War II anti-submarine defenses and that German U-Boats actually navigated up the Piscataqua River.

The tour will begin or end with a tour of the USS Albacore, the first Navy designed vessel with a true submarine hull form, and once the fastest submarine in the world.

She was made at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, served for years as a floating laboratory, testing sonar, diving breaks and emergency escape systems, and is now permanently dry berthed near downtown Portsmouth. Welcome aboard.

After lunch on your own, weather permitting, in downtown Portsmouth (Fat Belly's would be a good choice), meet the bus and depart for home, exhausted, but enriched and enlightened about your home state of New Hampshire.

In the event of inclement weather, you will have lunch in the food court at Fox Run.

OPTIONAL: Time permitting, and depending on the route to your home town, you may stop en route, outside Concord, New Hampshire, for a visit to the Krista McAuliffe Planetarium.