North Carolina 3: Chapel Hill & Carrboro

We stayed for the first 2 weeks in our friend Cathy's beautiful house right in the forest. From there, we went for walks among the trees, enjoying the variety of birds, flowers and cicadas - enjoying somewhat less the chiggers, mosquitos, spiders and other bitey creatures lurking on the forest floor.

We explored the cute university towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro. Restaurant food is high quality but leans pretty heavily on the deep fryer - luckily Cathy is an excellent cook of healthy, varied fare, and she and Reka bonded over a love of a good salad.

Something this part of the world does unquestionably better than Germany is farmers markets - we really enjoyed being shown around several local ones. We loved the fact that our hosts knew the vendors by name: Reka tells me that, while I was in New York, Jim (an old friend of our hosts) took her to a farmers market and, having just met Reka, repeatedly said "now you simply *must* meet Barbara, you'll love her!" at each new vendor.

Speaking of Jim, we were touched that after only one meeting he invited us to a big dinner at his house with his wife Jane, Cathy and Homer, and another childhood friend Eric. What a beautiful evening! We all told stories over wine, beer and excellent lasagne (made vegetarian especially for me). I think there's a lot to be learned from how youthful this group of 60- and 70-somethings are.

After 2 weeks, Daniel (Cathy's son) arrived fresh from a wedding in California, so we vacated his childhood bedroom and went to stay in the spare room of Jane, a warm and fascinating woman who has loved a very full life, and her charming old dog who's name I've forgotten.

Jane's house is right next to a pond where we spent lots of time watching turtles and geese (apparently there's been an effort by some of the more fun-hating neighbours to keep the geese away from the pond, thankfully fruitless). Jane showed us the local library , and on the way back we had biscuits, a local delicacy which (in my humble opinion) is better as a snack than a whole meal.

-AlexRead more