Hey all! Today started off pretty bleakly, we had to get up early, which is something few young people like to do. After getting all packed we headed off to Wilmington, NC, which as luck would have it, was 2 more hours away than we thought (4 hours in total). Besides that it started raining heavily, which made driving difficult :(. Wilmington made up for it though because this place is...adorable, that's a good word for it. We spent time in the Old Market by the harbor and it was full of really cute little shops and restaurants. For dinner we went to a place called Caprice Bistro, which served French cuisine which we all agreed was delicious. We split appetizers and got a pate, fried calamari, a crepe with spinach and a cheese sauce, and a tomato tarte tatin (which didn't really resemble a tarte tatin but it was yummy so I'll forgive them :P). For dinner Jake had Coq au Vin, Diana had Chicken Courdon-Bleu, Maya Bea had a Salad Nicoise (one of my favorite dishes), and I had a Duck Confit. All the food was shared so everyone got to enjoy a little of everything. We looked at dessert (they had tarte tatin :D) but had to decline because there was an ice cream/chocolate store we had passed which exuded the most amazing smell of chocolate and roast nuts, so naturally we had to go there. We looked at the shops bit and then made our way to the ice cream place. I do not know what anyone else had but I had chocolate. Other than the food and the adorable shops, another highlight was when we were accosted by a street side evangelical who was actually very nice.

Another thing I just remembered was our visit to Five Points, this gritty little area with a lot of edgy boutiques. We went to a shirt store called Bang On were you chose a design and they put it on the shirt, but all the shirts they had were too big for me (which was bittersweet since it made me feel skinny, but I couldn't get a shirt my size). Instead I wandered a CD/record/comic book shop called Criminal Records. I couldn't find anything classical but as i was bout to lose hope I found in a used record bin the album Chelsea Girl by Nico which I love. I also found The Dark Side of the Moon and a Solomon Burke CD (I have his version of Diamond in Your Mind and want to hear more of his). I did not get the Solomon Burke but I got the other two, which made me happy.

Oh and I just learned to make paper stars. Till next I blog,

Ricky