For the last week, we have had three of Mitchell’s friends visiting from Iowa. Since there’s nothing to do in Jacksonville (I know I sound like a broken record whenever I say that), we took them to Wilmington last weekend.

Before checking into our hotel in Wilmington, we stopped to get some southern BBQ (new for all of us), which is different from the BBQ we are used to in Iowa. Southern BBQ has a vinegar base, and it seemed like I couldn’t taste it no matter how much I put on my sandwich (which was still delicious, obviously). They also put coleslaw on their BBQ sandwiches, another first for me. Another thing that we have noticed is that the side dishes (called “vegetables” no matter what the side dish is) are different here – collard greens, tomatoes and cucumber, lima beans, fried okra, ect. Nothing too weird, but different from your standard fries and coleslaw ;)

We really wanted to explore Wilmington on Saturday, but it rained all day long. We tried to wait it out in our hotel but with no end of rain in sight, we finally ventured out to watch the Iowa State game at Front Street Brewery - their nachos are the best I've ever had ;). Our hotel was perfect. It was right on the boardwalk with a nice view of the river and of the USS North Carolina battleship. One of the outside walls of our hotel had a dolphin mural painted on it, by the famous marine life artist, Wyland (you can see some of his work here - I had heard of him because there is a famous wall in Key West that he has also done, so that was pretty cool!). But the best part of our hotel is that we  were able to walk everywhere we needed to in downtown Wilmington without having to worry about finding/paying for parking or worrying about finding a taxi to get home at the end of the night.

Rainy view of the river and the USS North Carolina from our hotel. Our view of the ship was much cooler than it looks in this picture.

I have talked about how beautiful downtown Wilmington is, but it is a whole different world at night. We were there for Saint Patrick’s Day weekend, and there were people everywhere. Lots of different bars to go to, lots of interesting people (think discharged Air Force service member full of conspiracy theories), and lots of fun. Unfortunately, I don’t have very many of pictures, so I’ll just leave you with this…..

(How lucky was I to be the only girl with these handsome boys?)

We woke up on Sunday to a beautiful day, and got to do a lot of the things we had originally wanted to do on Saturday. We walked along the river walk (I will never get sick of this), went on a waterboat tour of the river, and checked out the USS North Carolina. Wilmington is such a beautiful place, and I am so in love. It is growing quickly, and I’m sure it will look a lot different by the time we move.

Ship Selfie 

Pictures don't do this thing justice. It was enormous. 

The ship also gave nice views of downtown Wilmington

After our productive weekend in Wilmington, work on Monday greeted me with my first presentation, and I cannot express  how happy I am that that is over!  Luckily, it is  Friday again and the boys have left for Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. I’ll be headed down to meet them tomorrow, then they'll be headed back to Iowa. It was such a good week, and was nice to have some familiar faces in town.. although I must admit it took me a four-hour nap today to recuperate ;)

Positive things

It really is hard to believe we have been here over a month now. I think it is safe to say that we are finally feeling pretty settled. This post is a little lengthy, so I'm sorry for that ;) 

Mitchell got a job! He will be working for a computer company out of Wilmington that is expanding their business to Jacksonville. It sounds like it’s going to be a really great fit for him. I’m a pretty proud girlfriend – the first interview was a group interview, and there were almost 20 other candidates, some of them with quite a bit of experience and degrees. He starts tomorrow already, and once they get settled with the new business, he’ll be working four 10 hour days. I get a lot of vacation, so we are hoping for a lot of 3-day weekends to travel.. There is a lot to see within a 5-hour radius of Jacksonville, and we can't wait to get out and explore more. Especially after our weekend in Wilmington.

Our typical weekend routine has been to head to the beach, and check out new restaurants (by the time we leave Jacksonville, I still don’t think we will have tried them all ;) ). We decided on Saturday morning to go to Wilmington. Everyone has told us to check it out, and we have been meaning to, but we really took our time getting settled. I don’t know what we were waiting for – it is only an hour away, and Wilmington did not disappoint!

We rolled up to Wilmington around 1 in the afternoon, and we were starving. After a coin toss, we ended up at Fat Tony’s Italian Pub (Mitchell’s choice). It was a little Italian restaurant right on the river. I’m so happy Mitchell’s choice won, because the pizza was soo good! Des Moines people – it definitely gave Fong’s a run for their money!

This is our buffalo chicken ranch pizza. Sorry for the awful picture, but we were way too excited to dig in to take pictures while it was fresh and new ;)  

After eating, we walked around the town, then along the river. This is one of the top recommended things to do there, and even though it was very cold, it was beautiful. Wilmington is also home to the Battleship North Carolina (a huge ship from World War II) – the walk along the river gives an amazing view of the ship. We both wanted to stay longer, but our parking was running low, so we’ll just have to come back and walk the riverside again. We both really want to tour the ship, too, and I’m sure there’s a lot more that we didn’t see!

For all of you One Tree Hill fans, a lot of the scenes are filmed in Wilmington! If you remember the episode where Brooke and Peyton crash a college party, the scene where Peyton is drugged is on the steps of the federal courthouse (although I think I cut out most of the steps in this picture): 

 There are a lot more spots from One Tree Hill that I am planning to check out, but that will involve some planning, and this trip was really more of a whim for us. One of the gift shops there had sweatshirts that were the same as Keith’s business shirts, which was pretty cool!

As we were leaving the downtown area (around 3 pm) the bars were starting to fill up pretty quickly. I wanted to stay so bad! This is another must do on our list one day. The atmosphere there is very cool, and I’m very much looking forward to being able to get a hotel room and bar hop. They also have a bar hop ghost tour which I am all about!

After walking around downtown, we decided to go to the mall since the one in Jacksonville is so tiny. We played some blacklight mini golf, and just don’t worry about who won ;) 

We left the mall as it was starting to get dark, and tried to make our way to the beach. We made it, but it was so cold that we were only there about 5 minutes despite being the only ones on the beach.

We had such a great weekend in Wilmington, and it was much needed because we have been missing everyone back home a lot! We hope you are all doing well, and we would love visitors! ;)