North Carolina, Day 2

[kenjari]

September 24, 2006

Today was a nice mellow day. After a leisurely breakfast, Other Kenjari and I drove around Raleigh a bit and then headed into Durham for some further exploration.
We took a walk down the Beuhlar trail on the Duke ca,pus. It was a nice walk in the woods, despite the heat and humidity. It's more like mid-July here than late September. It's a little jarring to the system, but we're doing okay. Everything is amply air-conditioned, too.
We went down the the 9th street area for lunch. THere are lots of funky little shops there and inexpensive places to grab food.
We finished our day in Durham by going to Duke's Nasher Art museum. The place is very small: a few sculptures in the central space and three galleries, plus a small restaurant. Two of the galleries were showing video pieces. I like short art films just fine, but I rarely like watching them in a darkened museum space with other people walking in and out. So we concentrated on the third gallery, which contains a rotating selection of works from Duke's permanent art and artifact collections. It had a quite random selection: a Warhol, a few Dutch paintings, and some Roman artifacts. It was pretty interesting. Plus, the museum provided the air-conditioned comfort I was very much needing at that point.
We spent a couple of hours relaxing back in our hotel room, then went out to the Apple store in Raleigh to meet up with ashears. Other Kenjari and I got to drool over laptops and software while waiting for ashears to finish up. We also met up with her friend editgirl, and the four of us went out to dinner at the P. F. Chang's attached to the mall. The food was quite good and we had lots of fun conversation. ashears, Other Kenjari, and I finished up our evening at a local coffeehouse that reminded me a lot of Klekolo in Middletown.
Durham seems like a nice place. I definitely think I could be quite happy living here for a few years. Looking at the local papers, it also seems like there is a pretty good arts and music scene in the area.

Comments

[wildpaletz.livejournal.com]

Yay Editgirl!

She's a friend of mine from high school. No jokin'.

If you go to school there, in the summer there's the American Dance Festival, and there's also an International Documentary Film Festival every year as well (fall?). The Carolina Theater is a grand old theater that plays the art house movies and such. My mom used to be the manager of it before she died and it was totally redone.

Chapel Hill's nice too, and not too far. Lots of funky stuff on Franklin Street. It's a good area, affordable, green, liberal, and I still have a passel of friends from high school and earlier there. We keep debating just moving out even without me getting a postdoc there. It's not got tons of stuff like Boston, but has at least one of everything, including comic book/gamer stores.

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

We liked her alot. And I think we even drove by your old high school on Tuesday.
Keep your fingers crossed for me.

[wildpaletz.livejournal.com]

DEFINITELY!