Further Explorations of Elm St and Downtown

King's take:
We went to the Pizzaria and Pub, then we went to the UPS store to run an errand for mom. We used the key--turned the key--to open the box for 215 to get the mail.
We went to Queen City Cupcake and bought the last two cupcakes. Now we will go exploring.
The cupcake was messy, but yummy.
Then we went to walk on Elm Street, but it was raining. We went to the Manchester Public Library. We looked at a lot of books. I looked at the audiobooks. Then I helped Miaka check out some books. Then we waited for Mom to pick us up.
Next week is gonna be funky. So we're gonna be in Nashua?

Miaka's take:
Today was a 'lunch date' again, partly because there hasn't been a tour open at the Van Otis chocolate factory. We're still waiting on a chance to go there, it sounds like a lot of fun. (Not to mention yummy!)
We started the afternoon by slightly confusing Patch, who vehemently doesn't know Manchester. (Apparently 'down near the hotel' doesn't tell him much about Elm Street, which is odd because there's only one hotel I could possibly mean and he knows full well that it's next to Granite Street.) He seemed a bit miffed at my inability to give him a more exact description of where Portland Pie Co. is, and the fact that I wasn't paying attention to the surroundings the moment we got to Elm Street, while we were still north of Bridge St. I paid attention once we got closer, though, around the time we were passing Ben & Jerry's I started looking at the shops. The one we were headed to is on the corner of Elm and Merrimack, but I hadn't caught the name of the side-street until Patch dropped us off today. Giving directions doesn't come easily to me, and I tend to work best off landmarks, rather than street-names. This generally works out well, as Archi also tends to operate more on landmarks than street names. Patch, however, prefers street names.
At any rate, we got safely to Portland Pie Co. (Pizzaria and Pub). It's a very nice place, with a distict 'pub' feel to it. Thick wooden tables and sturdy chairs that aren't too heavy or anything. There's one area with 'normal-height' tables, and an area with a bar and high tables. King requested seats at one of the lower tables.  An ad-stand (what are those things called?) on the table suggested 'Captain Eli's Root Beer'; I flipped through the rest of the little ad-cards while King was looking at the menu, but I don't remember the other cards, only that the root beer sounded good. King decided to go with Sierra Mist, and I asked for Captain Eli's Root Beer, already thinking to myself that I must bring Archi here sometime. The root beer was 'on draft', the waitress explained when she brought it. King got a regular cup with ice and soda and a straw, while mine was in a chilled glass (no straw) and she brought a cup of ice for me. I ended up not needing the ice, though, as the root beer was at the perfect temperature.
King and I both decided on steak-and-cheese sandwitches, though he got a wrap and no onions, and I got a baguette (light onions) and some soup instead of chips. Everything was VERY good. King seemed to enjoy his a lot, though he doesn't talk as much about what's yummy as I do. The soup was eggplant and zucchini, and very tasty.
After lunch, we decided to run the errand Mom asked us to do for her before getting dessert. The UPS store was a short walk down the street, maybe as much as a block or so, with no cross-streets in the way. I pulled out the key Mom had sent along, and asked King to find box 215. It took him a bit, but he found it. I gave him the key to try and fit in, but it wasn't going in the way he was trying to put it in. To save a little time, I stuck the key in the lock for him (he'd been holding upside-down) but I made him turn it. This turned out to be a little funny. He kept grabbing and turning the key ring, rather than the key itself. Turning the key ring, of course, didn't affect the lock at all. "It's like a knob," I explained. "You grab the key part here," I tapped the metal circle sticking out of the lock mechanism, "and you turn it like a knob or a dial." A few tries later, he managed to  grab the right part of it and twist enough for the little door to pop open, allowing him to grab the mail from inside. Once we got the door closed again (another slight trick, as the lock mechanism had to be turned correctly to close the door, and again to lock it and pull the key out), we went to the counter in order to renew the box. This being more of a me-errand than a King-errand, he chatted with the gentleman behind the counter while I fished around in my purse for the card I needed. Errands discharged (get mail and renew mailbox for one year), we headed back the way we'd come, to the little shop next door to the pizzaria and pub.
Queen City Cupcake is a very cute little shop, done in pretty pastels, with cupcake prints and cupcake-pans on the walls. It's a lovely blend of cozy and modern, and a fairly new addition to Elm St. The sign on the door states that the close "when we run out of cupcakes". King and I were lucky, we got the last two cupcakes of the day. I don't remember what the flavor was called, but they were chocolate cake with almond frosting and slivered almonds sprinkled atop the frosting, the whole then drizzled lightly with more chocolate. The cupcakes were devine. King enjoyed his messily, chucking quietly as I enjoyed my cupcake. The frosting tasted like ammaretto minus the alchohol--sweet and almond and delicious. The chocolate cake was perfectly soft and springy and tasted just as devine as the frosting. Well worth the $3.50ea price tag, and large enough that they could be split. (Not with a hungry growing boy, though. Possibly with Archi, but King was more than able to demolish one on his own.) I decided that I simply must share this with Archi, as there was about half of mine left when King finished eating.
Sweet cravings appeased, we headed back out to explore more of Elm Street, only to discover that it was raining, or at least thinking about it. The drizzle got a little stronger as we went, though it was certainly not pouring or anything at any point during the trip. We stopped in the 'Brady Sullivan Plaza' (which used to be the 'Hampshire Plaza Mall' but they seem to have changed the name) to try looking around there. However, we discovered that it's a half-empty mall-ish place with no public bathrooms. (How odd, no public bathrooms.) There's a Post Office location there, but nothing that really seemed to be of interest to us, so we headed back out to the street. Glancing about, I realzied we weren't far from the library, so I suggested trekking over there. King agreed that the library sounded like a great idea.
The Manchester Public Library isn't on Elm Street, it's on Pine Street, but that's only a couple blocks east. A couple blocks isn't far, and the library is a place I'm familiar with anyhow, so getting there wasn't a problem. I called Mom to let her know of the minor change in plans--from 'explore Elm St' to 'visit library'--and she said 'OK, that sounds good... text me the library's address'. This confused me for a moment--I had no idea what the library's address was, I've never mailed them anything. I wasn't sure how the address would help her, either; it isn't like she has a GPS, or operates off street-names like Patch.
The trip up the couple blocks to the library involved 4 street crossings, since we were on the wrong side of Elm, and then the wrong side of Concord St. I think the rain and his hood were making it hard for King to see, because it took a while for him to recognize the library after I started pointing out to him. I didn't think he was seeing it when I first pointed it out, so I asked him what colour the doors were. He started guessing. "Red?" "Green?" "White?" Once we were on the way up the path through the park that let out right at the crosswalk which lead to the bottom of the library's granite steps, he could finally see where we were headed, and at last correctly identified that the library doors were "Brown." The doors are a natural-wood brown and quite heavy, probably soild oak. The building itself is a lovely old structure, constructed of white stone, which I think is marble. It's a magestic building, in a quiet sort of way, very well suited to a library. Brass handrails line the granite steps, one on each side and another in the middle. The tops of the rails are smooth, polished by hundreds of hands. Of course, the rain and the gloom of late afternoon in winter stole away a good part of their shine. We hurried up the stairs to get out of the rain and away from the ciggarette smoke. Fortunately, someone else was at the doors at about the same time we were, and helped push them open--they're quite heavy and harder to pull than to push, which oddly enough makes getting into the library more difficult than getting out, at least as far as the doors are concerned.
We went up to the desk and asked for the address of the library, which I quickly texted to mom, then went to go look at books. Well, King was acctually more interested in the audiobooks, but he seemed pleased enough to look through those while I looked through the nearby stacks for a while. We spent most of our time in the YA section, though I brought King over to look at the rest of the audiobooks as well. He opted not to get anything, apparently deciding that he had enough books and audiobooks at home. He sounded more interested in the DVDs available, but as they have only a 7-day loan, I suggested that he get DVDs from his town library, which is closer to him. I did find a few books to check out myself, so once we knew mom was on her way we headed over to check them out, then sat near the lobby and worked on this 'journal' for a bit, until mom called and said she'd gotten confused. King double-checked that his coat was all zipped up while I talked mom through where the library was and picked up my things, then we headed out the door as she passed the park across the street, and met her at the bottom of the stairs.
All in all, today was quite a fun adventure! Yes, as King pointed out, next week will be a trick. We'll be in Nashua instead of Manchester, working around other schedualed events for the day.