Wilmington, North Carolina   

    Fran and I recently spent a few days in a very beautiful city! We stayed at the Riverview Suites on Water Street. These condos are managed by the Hilton hotel chain.

    Water Street is adjacent to the Cape Fear River. Once lined with peanut and cotton warehouses, they started to display their age. Developers looked into the future and re-designed a very special section of this grand southern city. These warehouses were converted into many small shops and restaurants. As the tourists started to find this area, more and more retailers came to this portion of the city. From Italian specialty food shops, wine and cheese outlets to book and candle retailers setup shop. Seafood restaurants, southern diners and  sandwich shops were opened to offer the kinds of food shoppers enjoy. Of course hotels and rentable condos appeared to offer the visitors their choice of lodging.

    The local government also played an important role in this re-birth. The streets are clean and lined with beautiful trees and flowers. They secured the USS North Carolina, a huge  decommissioned battleship for tours and invited the US Coast Guard to dock their ships along Water Street.  Entertainment  is provided on Friday evenings along the river and farmers are welcomed to the waterfront for a Saturday market. Of course the local bars offer music nightly. One only has to walk outside and follow the music to locate a local bar with drinks and friends.

    I have assembled a small collection of photos of the area we experienced in mid-June, 2007. The weather was great with temperatures in the high 90s during the day and then cooling into the 70s from the nightly cool ocean breezes. Fran and I celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary in Wilmington. It is somewhere we will be returning to again and again.
 

Click the photo for a larger view

       
The Riverview Suites managed by Hilton. We had the 9th (top) condo on the south side.
       
Perfect view from the balcony of the Cost Guard Cutter Diligence and the USS North Carolina battleship.
     
The Riverboat Henrietta III taking tourists along the Cape Fear River.
       
At sundown off to dinner along the Riverwalk. On our return trip we noticed people on the US Court House steps.
       
The "Voltage Brothers" were performing! We were unaware a free concert was in progress.
         
This group is originally from Rochester, NY now based out of Atlanta, GA.
Beer and wine was available. Hundreds enjoyed the warm summer evening with great music from this group.
    
Only two police officers (who also enjoyed the concert) were assigned to this location.
        
The next morning everything changed! Now a farmer's market was in the same location as the party the night before!
 
A last look at Cape Fear River in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Wilmington has their "Riverfest" in early October with over 100 vendors selling their wares.
Hundreds of boats converge on the river and nightly fireworks displays are assured.

The following link is a promotional video for the "Voltage Brothers." It is eight minutes long...do yourself a favor and watch the entire video.
I never experienced a group that plays music from the 40's to present with each song sounding like the group that made the individual songs famous!
This group went non-stop for over three hours. No breaks, just fantastic music. I was impressed!

The Voltage Brothers!
 

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