T Stand for Hockey Season

Happy Tuesday folks. Today is the day we stop by Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog  and share a little drink fun. And sometimes  we even share some food or other adventures.

After all T is for Tuesday.

I have a little road trip fun for you today.

My T Day post is all about what the hubby and I like to do in the winter.

We like to watch hockey. Our favorite team is our college team, The University of Maine Black Bears.

Our college  used to have a strong and competitive team that was hard to beat. Lately they've gone downhill. In fact, they hadn't won an away game since January of 2015. 

But last Saturday they were playing the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Lowell is about 1 1/2 hours away from out home (half the distance of going back to our alma mater) so we got tickets for the game.

We were meeting my husband's sister and her husband (he's an alumni also) as well as my husband's cousin and his wife who just wanted a day out.

The game was at 4PM so before the game we met for lunch and a couple of pre-game beers, plus we had a little walk around the city of Lowell.

Lowell is an interesting place.  It began in the 1820's as an experimental factory city. Since the Merrimack River ( a large New England River) runs through the city, it made a good place for many early textile mills to be built. It was the first planned  and highly successful industrial city in the United States. After mills went out of business, the city suffered, but now there is a US National Historic park where you can learn about those mills and the lives of the mill girls back in the 1800's. The city has made a comeback and is actually an interesting place to visit.

Here's a few photos from my walk. 

 Here's an old trolley station and also a mill canal. I believe there were 6 miles of canals built throughout the city.

 And this is the arena where we went to watch the game. I will say it is one of my favorite venues. It is called the Tsongas Center, named after an influential Massachusetts legislator who hailed from Lowell.

I wish I had more of the historical mills to show you, but we didn't walk into that neighborhood. I visited the Mill Museum back in 2007 and maybe it's time to go back again. Here's a link to the National Historic Park Site if you are interested: Lowell National Historic Park. Maybe next spring or summer once they open up for another season I will make a point of going back.

Part of the reason we only had so much time was we were all meeting for lunch at an Irish Pub called The Old Court.

It certainly had some personality. And some cool wall art . I should have taken the wall art photo before the place got crowded.

But they did a a good beer selection.

My husband and I both had a Southwick's Red Ale which is made by Guinness and imported from Ireland. It's a nice drink.

And 4 out of the 6  of us had fish and chips for lunch.

I substituted onion rings for my chips. It was delicious and not greasy at all.

And after lunch we walked back to go to the game. Our team actually won, 6-2. Wahoo.

So a good time was had by all.

Thanks for visiting.