So, Brad and I moved to Durham about 6 months ago and so far, we are loving it down here! For whatever reason, it just feels like home - we loved the DC area (and still do - can't wait to go back and visit) but that always felt like a temporary place for us. So now that we are in NC, we're trying our best to explore the area and do as many random things as we can find (and trust me, random things are in abundance down here in the South!)
Anyway, our first fun activity was going with our buddies Beth and Jason to a local brewery - Trangle Brewing Company. Triangle Brewery is basically run by 2 local guys who bought some brew tanks, set up in a warehouse in a kind of run down area of Durham and have managed to make it all work. They recently added 3 new fermenters to the mix which was neat to see and good to hear that they will be increasing their beer production - hopefully we can find their bottles in the store soon. For now, we have to settle for getting it on tap at some local restaurants and for the (free and all you can drink!) beers at the brewery tour. Fortunately, Beth and Jason are expecting (congrats you guys!!) so we had ourselves a fabulous designated driver allowing us to partake in all the free beer we could drink while we were on the tour or hanging out afterwards playing ping pong or cornhole in the warehouse. Super fun and I think we'll be back in the future for more free tours!
We've also started to check out our local farmers' markets ... the one in downtown Durham is great and has a neat community feel. We'll have to check out the Raleigh market soon - it is supposed to be enormous and brings in farmers from all over the state.
(Check out the lady's shirt - it says "Namaste Y'all". Awesome.)
We also went to the annual "Taste of Durham" where local restaurants come and set up in tents in a big open parking lot. You buy tokens and can go around and sample the various cuisines - the number of really good restaurants is one of the things that we have been pleasantly surprised by here in Durham.
Back in college, the only cuisine we sampled were the food options on campus or Cosmic Cantina (still my favorite burrito joint in the entire world!) But turns out that Durham is actually considered a good food town (Bon Appetit magazine named Durham/Chapel Hill "
America's Foodiest Small Town"). So, Taste of Durham is intended to showcase some of that local flavor - plus some live music, a beer and wine garden, and (randomly) a snow sled run!
And finally, topping the random things to do in Durham - we recently went to the Great American Duck Race (rubber duckies that is!). The event is an annual fundraiser for the Inter-Faith Food Shuttle which picks up unused foods from local restaurants, caterers, and the aforementioned Raleigh farmers' market and redistributes to hungry families in the area.
We donated some money to the program and were given 2 rubber duckies in return which we could enter in the race. The whole thing was kind of hysterical - imagine a whole lot of people running around with rubber duckies, decorating them and then letting them loose in the little river (complete with event staff wading behind the ducks with tennis rackets to move the ducks along if they got stuck). Our fabulously decorated duckies (ahem, thank you very much) didn't win but we had fun and loved the randomness of it all!
Hopefully many more fun local Durham area activities to come!!
