Bull City Bees Beekeeping adventures in downtown Durham

You may have seen it coming (if so, pat yourself on the back from us), Jill and Chris are getting married.  What you may not have known are the specifics, mostly because we’re still working on some of those.  Here’s what we know so far:

Date: March 16, 2013

Time: 5pm (5:30?) until 8pm with random bar hopping downtown to follow

Location: Wedding and dinner reception in the event room at Vin Rouge in Durham, NC

Mission statement: To come together as a group, have a great meal and watch Chris and Jill get married by Todd in an Elvis costume.

Places to Stay 

There are also still some things to work out, like where will everyone stay?  While we would love for everyone to come and stay with us, there just isn’t room and we don’t want to play favorites.  Instead, we’re looking around at different options in the area, including:

• Downtown Durham Marriott
• King’s Daughter’s Inn
• Sheraton Imperial
• Hampton Inn
• Arrowhead Inn
• Old North Durham
• Millienium Hotel Durham 

Places to Eat 

• Rue Cler (you may need reservations, order the pre-fixe menu)
• Watts Grocery (reservations are also good here)
• Parker and Otis (casual place for breakfast or lunch, eat the grilled pimento cheese with bacon)
• The Federal (good specials, an all-American (literally) beer selection)
• Bull McCabe’s (order the special, eat everything on your plate or suffer John’s wrath or don’t make eye contact with the scruffy guy in the National’s hat, did you ever see Northern Exposure?  The chef that prepared wonderful food, but was scruffy and went around barefoot?  That’s John.)
• Dos Perros (drink a michelada, or a pesco sour)
• Tobacco Road (nice view of the ball park)
• Broad Street Café (wood fired pizza, try the butternut squash, gorgonzola and bacon pizza!)
• King’s (get a milkshake, the tater-tots are good too)
• Reliable Cheese Company
• Loaf (pain au chocolate, best pastries I’ve ever had – hands down)
• Tylers (big beer selection-eat fried pickles, decent burgers and fries)
• Revolution (we haven’t actually eaten here, but we hear it’s swanky, don’t confuse it with Cuban Revolution (seriously) over near the ballpark)
• Pop’s (good food by the same folks at Rue Cler)
• Saigon Cafe (looks a touch scary, but there’s fantastic Vietnamese food there)

Things to Do

Again, we would love to hang out with everyone, but we suspect that we may be tied up.  If you’ve never been to Durham, there are a number of things to do in the area:

• Durham Farmers Market (Saturday morning-watch out for hippies)
• American Tobacco Campus
• Museum of Life and Science (visit the lemurs and the alpacas)
• Tour Duke’s campus (the chapel is amazing)
• Duke Gardens
• Durham Bull’s Stadium (old and new)
• Carolina Theater (we don’t know what will be there yet, but there are usually good movies (read artsy films shot in black and white, all in German with subtitles)).
• Southpoint Mall (giant mall-we probably didn’t invite you if you’re excited about the mall, but there is a movie theater if you’re in to that sort of thing)
• Fullsteam (beer)
• Motorco
• DPAC (there doesn’t seem to be anything going on in march)
• Food trucks (try to track down pie pushers – even at breakfast.  Especially at breakfast!)
• Pinhook (kind of scary but good people watching, don’t sit on the couches)
• Nasher Museum of Art (visit the giant head)
• Brightleaf (outdoor mall. Don’t go to Satisfactions’ unless you are in to undergraduate bars)
• Ninth Street (don’t eat the burritos at cosmic cantina, do get dessert at Francesca’s.  Do eat the burritos or better yet, go to Francesca’s.  Bean Trader’s coffee is nice (enough).  If you’re looking for the local head shop, check out Native Threads)
• Duke Lemur Center
• Merge records next to Reliable Cheese (stalk the best bands. actually, please don’t do this.  Really.)