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! ;)