Pokey Smokey II at Portsmouth City Park

Last year, around Christmas, I posted that Anne was going through a phase in which she was excessively fond of trains. Update, this phase shows no signs of being over anytime soon. At this point, I don't ever expect it to be, I fully believe that one day I'll be driving in the car with 45-year-old Anouk and she will flip out when she hears a train whistle. Mom, a train! Can you see it, Mom? Can you?

Norfolk is a good city for trains (we were stopped by three while we were out driving last week), but sometimes you just have to get a little more up close and personal with one, and when that happens, you visit Portsmouth City Park, to ride the Pokey Smokey II, a miniature red train that chugs around the park on a 3/4-mile loop. The original Pokey Smokey began operating in 1964, but closed in 2005 due to safety concerns. The track was fixed, a new train was commissioned, and the second Pokey Smokey was put back in service in 2011 (and parents everywhere rejoiced).


Anouk loved riding on the train, especially the little stretch of the track that creeps along by the Elizabeth River and waving like crazy at the kids playing on the playground, adjacent. And there were a lot of them this sunny Saturday afternoon. The Portsmouth City Park is really a stellar park, with incredibly well-kept playground equipment, lots of shady trees to relax under, a snack bar, a friendship garden, and even a golf course with a driving range and putting green.

Did you know there's a word for love of trains and rail travel? There is: siderodromophilia. I am raising a siderodromophiliac child, how about you?

Vintage scenes from the Portsmouth Flea Market

At the beginning of May, Molly and I spent a rare kidless morning at the monthly Antiques to Flea Market in Olde Towne Portsmouth. In our rummaging, I found a stack of vintage postcards showing scenes from Norfolk in the 1910s, '20s, and '30s. They were a little overpriced, so I didn't take any of them home. But I can't stop looking for similar vintage postcards online. It's so amazing to see how our familiar city has changed over the years, how much different things are now and how much they are the same. When I was growing up, downtown Granby Street was a mess of boarded-up buildings, but now it looks as bustling with life as it does in the postcard from the '30s, above. 

Looking at these old cards, I've started a sort of mental list of dream destinations around Hampton Roads, places I would visit and blog about if I had a time machine at my disposal. First up on the list: definitely the Ocean View Amusement Park. Can you just imagine? 

The Portsmouth flea is a really varied market -- I can't wait to go back next month. There's a good amount of junque, but with many excellent finds interspersed. Here are some of the ones we came across:  

^^ Molly haggling with a vendor -- she ended up getting the three metal bins in the foreground for craft-room storage.

 ^^ I was a fan of this mirror but a bigger fan of the vintage trunk behind it.

^^ A pair of truly awesome 70s era side tables.

^^ We affectionately called this mirror the "skinny mirror" -- so named because it was truly and amazingly flattering. Looking in it was like instantly losing 10 pounds. It was from the mid-1800s and thus out of our price range, but I like that it's been making women feel pretty for well over a hundred years.  

^^ I have a thing for antique glassware. 

An afternoon in Olde Towne Portsmouth

As I mentioned earlier in the week, on Sunday, J., Baby A., and I took the ferry to Portsmouth. We had no particular plans of places to go or things to do. The wonderful museum district was right there, but because of the Redskins game later in the day, we didn't dare do anything too time-consuming that might prevent us from being back home in time for kickoff.

So we just walked for a bit. And ended up discovering some interesting little features about the city that we'd never known about before. In case you ever find yourself in a similar predicament, I give you a recap of our impromptu mini-walking tour of Historic Portsmouth, VA. Here are some of the things we saw and enjoyed.

-The seawall

The Portsmouth seawall stretches along the riverfront and walking it gives a wonderful view of the boats going past. Just on our way between the High Street and North Landings, we saw a couple of tugs (who sounded their horns obligingly -- is there anything more satisfying than the reverberating sound of a tugboat horn on a cloudy day?), a container ship, and a few beautifully painted yachts. Baby A. had a blast waving at them and added the word "boat" to her expanding vocabulary.

-Hog Island Lighthouse Lens

The Hog Island lens stood in a lighthouse on Hog Island (one of the Virginia barrier islands) until the island finally eroded away in the 1940s. Now the lens lives at the Portsmouth waterfront, just by the High Street ferry landing. The lens, dating from 1898, is cut through with tons of prisms, and huge, towering over even James, who towers over me and A. It was fun to walk around the glass pavilion and try and count all of the rainbows (hundreds and thousands of them. We didn't stand a chance).

-Trinity Church

Trinity Church was founded in 1761, served as a British garrison in the Revolutionary War, founded the Children's Hospital of the Kings Daughters in the 1890s, and features several beautiful Tiffany windows. It surrounds a gorgeous courtyard, and next to it is a really gloomily spooky old graveyard. Have I mentioned that one of my favorite things is to walk through graveyards and read the old names? My fingers itched for my grave-rubbing supplies.

-The Pass House

Currently, it's a photography studio, but from 1862-1864, the unassuming brick row house at the corners of Crawford and London Streets was a Union Army headquarters. To go outside the city, or across the river to Norfolk, you needed a pass, which you had to get at (you guessed it) the Pass House. We peeked over the gate and saw the door to the old pass office, and we also saw some really beautiful roses blooming by the fence. (We love January roses. Thanks, global warming!)

-Confederate Monument

It's a little unsettling to see the monument 'to our Confederate dead' standing so imposingly at the intersection of Court and High Streets (at least it was for me). From a purely objective standpoint, the monument is finely done, the carving of the soldiers who stand sentry on the four sides of the tall obelisk are super convincing, at least to a toddler -- Anouk kept pointing to them and calling, "Hi! Hi!" It was an experience to see it -- it made me mindful -- but all the same, it's one I'm glad I don't have to have every day.

-The Lightship Portsmouth Museum

The Lightship Portsmouth was built in 1915, kind of a traveling lighthouse used to help ships enter harbor at night. She was retired after almost 50 years of service, and now she's a museum featuring artifacts, photographs, old uniforms, and fitted out seaman's quarters (NONE of which we got to see because the museum itself was closed the day we went -- boo!) But we did get to explore the outside of the ship and pronounced it awesome.

Bonus attractions: The areas next to the High Street and North ferry landings, respectively, feature a red post-box and telephone booth donated by the city of Portsmouth in England. The telephone booth has an actual working pay phone in it, which is notable in and of itself. Definitely something to show the kids. A phone with a cord!

A dial tone! How quaint!

I hope you have enjoyed this brief collection all of the random things we happened to see as we moseyed along Olde Towne (those 'e's are driving me nuts!) Portsmouth. We sure did! I always make James stop when we see one of those old bronze historical marker signs so I can read it and on Sunday I read a dozen to my hearts' content. Hooray!

If you are wondering exactly what route we walked and are interested in recreating it, according to this map, we went up High Street to turn right on Dinwiddie, then right again on London Street all the way back to the ferry landing. Or you could just let the professionals take the lead.

The Elizabeth River ferry

James swears that we rode the Elizabeth River ferry together years ago as part of a romantic night out, but I have no memory of this ever having happened, which bothers me a little, because it means that 1) I am getting old and don't remember or 2) James is getting old and remembering wrong. 

Anyway! After the span of rainy days last week, we were all of us feeling a little stir crazy this weekend. We wanted to get out and go for a walk by the water, so we headed downtown to Waterside, and while there, saw the ferry approaching. On the spur of the moment, we got in line, paid for our tickets, and before we knew it, were heading across the river to Portsmouth (or Porchmouth, if you have a Tidewater accent, which James says I do. I don't hear it. This could be another sign of his creeping senility. He did just have a birthday, you know). 

It was cold out, so we sat inside next to the heaters, where it was toasty warm and where, through the big picture windows, we could see the shipyard, the yachts going by, the gulls swooping low over the water. See Anouk's face in the photos at the top of this entry, her mouth open like "Whoa..."? She made that face the whole way across. 

The ferry is great way of getting from Norfolk to Portsmouth, and vice versa. It's totally worth it to not have to worry about driving through the tunnel and finding parking. But more than that, it's great cheap entertainment, enough of a novel experience to be considered a destination in itself. I can't think of another way to get this kind of up-close view of the waterfront without paying way more than the ferry fare ($1.50 each way for adults, free for kids under 38 inches tall). Next time, we're going to wait for warm weather and sit up top on the open deck so we can have the whole 360 view.

The journey across the river took about 10 minutes, and then we were in Olde Towne Portsmouth, where we spent a couple of hours roaming around. But this entry is already getting picture-heavy, so I think I'll save our exploits there for another day and leave you with some additional information about the ferry: click here for a schedule and map.

I've been getting a lot of the same questions from commenters and emailers lately, so I decided to be efficient and post an FAQ. WTWGrow@gmail.com if there's anything you'd like me to add! 

Children's Museum of Virginia

Ever since we moved to Hampton Roads, we've had people telling us that we simply have to visit the Children's Museum of Virginia in Portsmouth. You know how sometimes EVERYONE tells you you just have to do something and then you do and it's not awesome? Our visit to the Children's Museum last Sunday was the opposite of that.

In fact, there was SO much to see and do that we spent nearly three hours at the museum and didn't even make it to the second floor. Over an hour of that time was spent in the bubble room; another good chunk was devoted to the train room. Each exhibit was so enthralling to Baby A. that when it was time to move on to the next one, she had a meltdown of major proportions. (No! No! Fun! HELP ME!) It seems strange to have a tantruming toddler be an indicator of a good time, but you'll just have to trust me on this one.

Greatest hits from our visit? The bubble room, where J. spent a long time trying to perfect the art of the human-sized bubble, the toddler play area, where A. and I lounged in the nest with the big blue egg pillows, and the replica HRT bus, where we spun the steering wheel and joined a crowd in as many refrains of the "Wheels on the Bus" as we could think of. There were no misses.

Anouk was so sorry to leave that I was afraid we were going to be arrested for kidnapping on our way out.

Yeah. It's that awesome.

Right now the Children's Museum, Porstmouth Art and Cultural Center, and Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum are offering a Winter Wonderland Holiday Pass: $12 admission to all three sites, valid through December 31. It's an amazing deal and one we made sure to take advantage of! More details here.