Thursday, July 23, 2009

Our family Wilmington trip

My family came to town to visit us for a few days this week from New Hampshire. My entire family has had an affinity with both the sea coast and, of course, food so a two day trip to Wilmington, NC seemed like a great idea to appease both appetites. But, unfortunately, none of them share my love for a good cigar :)


We saw some amazing sites. The Battleship North Carolina is an amazing thing to see. You could spend HOURS on that ship and still not see it all, just awesome. It's one of the highest awarded ships from world war 2 and permanently docked there in Wilmington on the Cape Fear river.


We walked the "River Walk" while gorging ourselves on home made ice cream stuffed in fresh made waffle cones. The smells sucked us in and it was really hard to resist eating at least 2 a day. Every moment the Kilwins Ice Cream shop was opened, there was a line of at least 30 people running out the door. The ice cream shop across the street could only look on with amazement as we all ate our frozen desserts, wondering why said ice cream shop had no customers. Maybe its because they aren't making their own cones. The smell of a house made waffle cone would bring most people to their knees!



We took a horse drawn wagon tour pulled by Ned and Bobby, two rescued horses, around one of the historic neighborhoods in the area. Some of the houses on the tour were built in the late 1700s and still in tact. Its really impressive to see all the amazing homes that look like they did back in the day. Some of the streets are still covered in cobblestone and caused the wagon to bounce us all over the place, lol, funny.


We couldn't be in a great port town without visiting a few great restaurants. There were some really amazing places to eat during our stay. We started off with a great fried fish platter and bar apps at the Surf's Bar and Grille, yum.

One night we ate on the river walk at a place called The Pilot House where I had a really good carpaccio appetizer followed by an awesome tuna main course (I ordered it very rare, of course :) ) mom had a maple glazed salmon, sis had the fillet Mignon and wifey had the crab cakes. We all split a few shrimp cocktail and the girls split a bottle of wine, great night of noshing.

For a quick light lunch, we stopped by a place that makes their own beer, The Front Street Brewery (FST for short). The place was PACKED!!! I mean, there must have been like hundreds of people eating great food and drinking the local brew. There were these HUGE brass beer brewers (no idea what they're called, lol, I'm a chef and I don't drink!). We chowed down on one of the best pulled pork sammiches I've ever had, sweet potato fries, burgers and check out the picture of Frogmore Stew, a local favorite. :)

If you're ever in Wilmington, North Carolina, I think you'd agree it's a great destination to get away for a couple days and hang out by the water. You're really close to some great beaches too. We hung out at Wrightsville Beach and collected shells and put our toes in the sand. That's my idea of relaxation man. Toes-in-sand and the sounds of the ocean is all I need.


And, lets not forget the scenic walks through the local neighborhoods checking out the amazing churches, T-shirt shopping at Wing's, the aquarium and last, but not least, the laughs in the hotel. Wow, good thing we have a sense of humor, eh? Gotta love it.


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