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It's funny, I never thought I'd like it here, being from the futuristic seaside megalopolis that is New Bedford, Massachusetts (Ellen: hahaha--my mother lived a few years of her childhood in Marion. She is still incapable of sensing cold) but NH grows on you.
First off, Manchester - Manchester is very nice. It has its crappy parts on the East Side (as most small cities do) but the west side is relatively quiet and nice with several dozen old two and three bedroom tenements lining the somewhat narrow streets. This is the French Canadian part of the city and has a very active French speaking Catholic community, some small French Canadian restaurants (like Chez Vachon - a one star eating experience). The houses are almost all relatively well kept, some with very nice albeit small backyard gardens. Rents range from 800-1000 per month depening on how many bedrooms the place has. Some make you pay for your own oil, other don't. (Ellen: Oil. What a concept. We do natural gas out here in Chicago) ...
Manchester has undergone a minor renaissance over the last 10 years and the Elm Street area downtown is lovely and choked with restaurants and taverns as well as indie clothing stores and bookshops. It's a lovely street, and the only double dead end main street in the United States (honest, look it up). Manchester has one all day/all night diner, The Red Arrow, where you can get hot coffee and French Meat Pie pretty much whenever you want, and it's cheap, and non-smoking. The waitresses traverse the line between completely ambivalent to your presence and openly hostile to your presence. Here's a tip, don't ever order the Chili dog... How they manage to completely fuck up such a simple meal is beyond the sum total of knowledge stored in the universe. Anyway, It's a fun place. ...
Manchester is about 60 miles north of Boston, and depending on which day you travel, and whether or not the Sox are playing, can be a nice 60 minute drive or an agonizing 5 hour crawl. Rt 93 South runs almost the entire length of the state and down into Boston is a 4-lane (sometimes) and 2-lane (usually) highway. Avoid it if possible on weekday mornings between 6AM and 10AM and afternoons between 3PM and 7PM unless you relish the experience if sitting in traffic.
Manchester is about 100 miles south of Mt. Washington and the best hiking mountains of The Presidential Range. I took a class of kids up Mt. Monadnock one summer. It was fun in a Bataan Death March sort of way. But, the view at the top was grand. I had two dozen foot blisters that lasted a week and I wanted to gnaw off my own legs... Still, the mountains are very nice. Mt Washington is lovely and has an old coal-powered railroad "The Cog" that will take you from base to tip in about three hours. It's a nice ride, albeit somewhat smokey.
Mt. Washington is also the home of Tuckerman's Ravine, the unmonitored ski and snowboard slope that claims at least three lives a year. Yay!
The Lakes region is lovely (except during Bike Week, unless you marvel at the sight of Hells Angels and The Lynchmen beating the shit out of each other with broken pool cues and Jack Daniels bottles while zonked on too much Jaegermeister and methamphetamines.). Bike week is in July. Most of us in NH leave the state that weekend just to be on the safe side.
The weather in NH ranges from pleasantly warm in the summer to "Hey look, Mastodons in the backyard" cold in the winter. Snowplows are everywhere. Last year is snowed in Southern NH in late April, which was unusual only in that winter didn't really set in until Labor Day.
Manchester doesn't have much of a big cultural side. We do have the Currier Gallery of Art, which is small but VERY nice, we also have the Verizon Arena where you can enjoy such cultural experiences as major recording artists (Cher, Willie Nelson, Britny Spears, Bob Dylan)/Manchester Monarch's Ice Hokey/the Barnum and Bailey Circus/WWE Rasslin/Mud Bog Racing etc... It's pricey and half my in-laws work there so I don't go much... We also have UNH Manchester who sometimes has film and speakers open to the public. Nearby, St. Anselm's College offers wonderful theater, music, and dance programs throughout the year. Manchester also has The Palace Theater that was the first theater in the US to have air conditioning. It was recently renovated and is lovely inside, definitely a throwback to the early 20th century. Beside The Palace Theater is a bar named "The Stage Door Cafe" which is a great place to go if you want to get hepatitis before the theater doors open. (Ellen: Such a deal, just can't pass it up.)
The "big deal" radio station up here is WOKQ, or as I call it W-Low-IQ, the all country station. They have, perhaps, the most annoying morning show in the history of human civilization. The rest of the stations are either Clear Channel, or using that goddamn fake iPod format Frank/Jim/Bob FM that makes most of us consider taking out a contract on the guys in the band Boston because they play More than a Feeling every 20 minutes...
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